MDC national vice-chairperson Tendai Biti, who is on trial
for allegedly violating the Electoral Act after he announced that his party
leader Nelson Chamisa had won the July 30 presidential election, yesterday
insisted that the youthful opposition politician had, indeed, won in nine
provinces, whose poll tallies were posted at polling stations manned by their
party agents.
Biti, who was put to his defence after his application for
discharge was dismissed, told magistrate Gloria Takundwa that under normal
circumstances, Chamisa would have been declared presidential election winner
because, at the time, only Mashonaland West province had outstanding results.
He said he did not announce the results, but simply
interpreted what the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had officially posted
outside its polling stations.
“In a normal election run by a normal elections commission,
Advocate Nelson Chamisa would be the President right now. In my statement to
the media, I said Chamisa won the elections in Manicaland, Harare,
Matabeleland, Masvingo and Bulawayo and Zec did not dispute that in court,
except in Mashonaland West province, where the results were not posted outside
the polling station,” Biti told court.
He said the police cherry-picked part of his statement to
the media, leaving out other contents in order to incriminate him.
When asked by prosecutor Tafadzwanashe Mpariwa why he
announced the results before Zec’s official announcement, Biti told court that
Zec had already announced the official results by posting them outside polling
stations.
Mpariwa was taken to task by Biti’s lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa
after he asked the opposition legislator to compare the results he released to
the Press and Zec’s official results.
Mtetwa asked the prosecutor to tell the court the Zec
presidential elections official results before Biti could give his own set of
results.
Mpariwa failed to, but insisted that Zec’s figures were the
official ones.
“Your Worship, I don’t think there is anyone who knows the
official figures of the presidential election. Even Mr (Emmerson) Mnangagwa
does not know the number of the votes he got,” Biti told court.
He said he announced the results collected from their
agents in nine provinces to put pressure on Zec to release the results, saying
delaying the announcement would have given Zec room to manipulate the figures.
Biti added that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s July 31,
2018 tweet saying he had won the elections before Zec’s announcement was still
on his handle and that Zanu PF secretary for legal affairs Munyaradzi Paul
Mangwana said the same thing, but they were not arrested.
Biti said his prosecution was politically motivated. Takundwa postponed the matter to February 18 for ruling,
but dismissed Biti’s application for discharge , saying the State had proved a
prima facie case against him.
Takundwa did not proffer reasons for dismissing Biti’s
application, saying she would provide them in her judgment. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment