Senior Pastor, President and founder of NeXus Ministries and Build Zimbabwe Alliance presidential candidate Dr Noah Manyika responded to the MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa’s presidential election results court challenge.
In his affidavit, Dr Manyika supports fellow pastor Chamisa’s petition and says they have also uncovered inconsistencies in the results issued by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
In a media address on Thursday, the clergyman who staked the 4.9% of the remaining votes with other 20 presidential candidates after President Mnangagwa amassed 50,8%, and Mr Chamisa garnering 44,3, challenged the constitutional judges presiding over the election outcome case to side with the truth as their honour have a long way to run.
Said Manyika: “I’m totally confident that we totally understand what happened now and our best remedy now is to go to the courts. Now look, I want to challenge those judges who are gonna sit on the constitutional court. Look, your reputation is going beyond this election. It is. You have to make the hard decision to side with truth.”
Although the standard model of legal education treats law as a science, legal reasoning as a purely deductive process and emotions (empathy or compassion) as the enemy of reason, Dr Manyika implored the judges to give room for compassion in this case.
“Facts are very simple and you know what, if some of them (judges) are tempted to rule on the basis of a technicality, think about your children, think about all the Zimbabwean people who are suffering right now. Think about that. It’s really really important that they judge this on the basis of facts rather than anything else.
“And again, as I said their reputation is going to follow them beyond this court, this particular incident and they have to think seriously about that because at the end of the day I really believe that they will not be able to sustain a result which is inconsistent with the will of the people...We are not asking them to do anything beyond the facts,” he said.
Among some of the flaws uncovered by Dr Manyika and his team in the court files are conflict between announced results and published results, double counting of polling stations, polling stations with identical results, ghost polling stations, more votes than registered voters at polling stations, more votes in the Presidential Election than the Parliamentary Election and ZEC results not tallying.
Mr Chamisa last Friday filed an appeal at the Constitutional Court, alleging that the official results announced by the ZEC that declared Pres. Mnangagwa the winner were not credible. Mnangagwa along with the other 21 losing presidential candidates and ZEC were all cited as respondents in the high-profile petition.
In his response entered on Wednesday, Mnangagwa contended that there was no valid election petition challenging his victory. He raised several preliminary objections to the petition.
On Friday it was announced that the Constitutional Court will next Wednesday, August 22, hear the case.
Lawyers for the cited parties yesterday attended a case management meeting in Chief Justice Luke Malaba’s chambers where the hearing date was set for next Wednesday.
The parties also agreed on the timelines and how the matter should proceed to ensure quality justice within the permissible 14-day period.
On Thursday other ecumenical church groups and the civil society of Zimbabwe released a statement in which they demand judiciary independence in this Constitutional Court Case and blamed ZEC chairperson Justice Chigumba for the current unnecessary political mess that has led to the killing of innocent civilians by trigger-happy soldiers, saying she was arrogant and unaccommodating to very pertinent concerns.
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