HARARE – Zimbabwe’s new High Court Judge President George Chiweshe, whose controversial appointment has stoked fresh tensions in the power-sharing government, may yet play a decisive role in the quest by President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party to retain power, analysts said.
Chiweshe, who was chairman of a previous discredited electoral commission, is deeply unpopular with Mugabe’s opponents after holding onto election results for five weeks in the watershed March 2008 vote, which saw Mugabe trail Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of voting.
The 86-year-old went on to win the run-off, which Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai boycotted citing massive violence against his supporters.
Last week Mugabe unilaterally swore-in Chiweshe as Judge President of the High Court without consulting his colleagues in the fragile coalition, triggering uproar from the MDC that accuses Mugabe of intransigence.
Strategic
Analysts said Chiweshe’s new job is strategic in the context of future elections as he will single handedly pick judges from the High Court bench to sit on the Electoral Court to preside over all election related disputes.
“I have no doubt that this was well calculated. Chiweshe is ZANU PF’s man and in his new position he will be able to determine the outcome of all electoral disputes brought to the electoral court,” John Makumbe, a senior political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe said.
“He may once again come to Mugabe’s rescue if it gets to that the MDC should be very worried but I don’t see how this decision will be reversed now.”
Chiweshe, a former army officer who fought in Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war, was a High Court judge before being deployed to chair the now defunct electoral commission.
A new Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was named last month and is chaired by Simpson Mutambanengwe, a consensus figure who served at the Zimbabwe High Court before moving to the Namibian bench where he worked for more than a decade, including as acting chief justice.
Disputes
ZANU PF and MDC have agreed on some amendments to the electoral rules but analysts said ultimately, if there are disputes, the Electoral Court is the first port of call.
Zimbabwe’s elections have for the past decade been marred by violence, human rights abuses and allegations of rigging with the courts stepping to decide on disputes. But opposition parties have complained about many of the rulings by the courts.
“Mugabe is focused on consolidating power at all costs and so everything that he does unilaterally should be seen in this context,” said Lovemore Madhuku, a constitutional law expert and chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly political pressure group.
The Electoral Court has the power to declare election results null and void on the grounds of fraud, violence and intimidation, ballot tampering and can disqualify a winning candidate and order a re-run.
When the Chiweshe-led electoral commission sat on the March 2008 poll results, the MDC filed an urgent application to the Electoral Court to have them released, but the court threw out the application.
Zimbabwe’s High Court and Supreme Court have since 2002 undergone several changes, with white judges pushed out in favour of black judges.
Compromised
Most of the judges have been given choice farms seized from white commercial farmers and critics say this has compromised their independence, but the judges maintain that they remain impartial.
“It is going to be difficult in future for the MDC to accept the rulings of the Electoral Court judges nominated by Chiweshe. Consequently, will Chiweshe rule in favour of an application by the MDC, which has openly opposed his appointment?” said Makumbe.
The southern African country has always had troubled elections since 2000, with disputes spilling into the courts, but this has rarely changed the outcome, with some Supreme Court judgments being delivered when the life of a parliament has expired and fresh elections are due.
The unity government formed in February last year was meant to put in place political, media and security reforms to prepare for free and fair fresh elections, but troubles over how to share power have stalled most of the reforms.
While the coalition has hobbled along, analysts say it is unlikely to disintegrate as this could plunge the recovering economy back into crisis.
– ZimOnline
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