PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe yesterday said elections will be held by July 31 in compliance with a Constitutional Court ruling last Friday.
REPORT BY STAFF REPORTER
Mugabe told State media in Yokohama, Japan where he is attending the 5th Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD) that he had no intention of “disobeying” the court ruling.
The constitution court said Mugabe’s failure to fix and proclaim the date or dates for harmonised general elections by June 29 was a violation of his constitutional duty towards the country’s citizens. The court observed that Mugabe had violated his functions as a public officer in accordance with the law and to observe and uphold the rule of law in terms of section 18(1) of the Constitution.
Responding to the court ruling Mugabe told the State-controlled ZBC: “Well, that is the ruling of the court and when the court gives a ruling, and the ruling is a judgment, and the judgment is meant to establish how people should react to it.
“We accepted that judgment and we will work in accordance with that judgment, let it be said, of course, that the GPA (Global Political Agreement) was never meant, really, to exist for more than 18 months and when we started we had 18 months in mind as duration it had and thereafter we will have an election, but we did agree along the way that we should have a people driven constitution.”
He added: “We have been asking for postponements and now we have this individual asking on an emergency basis at the court and elections will be held. We have offended against the law twice and we can’t anymore, and anyway elections will be held within the given timeframes.”
A Harare man Jealous Mawarire recently took Mugabe to court to compel him to call for elections by June 29, when the life of the current Parliament expires.
