The ruling comes after Mr Tonderai Chidawu approached the
court to order the restart and to invalidate processes that took place in
Parliament since the preliminary delimitation report was tabled on January 6
for lack of compliance with the Constitution.
Parliament yesterday handed over to President Mnangagwa its
report on the preliminary delimitation report produced by the electoral
commission last month in line with provisions of the Constitution.
The parliamentary report was produced by an all-party ad-hoc
committee established by Parliament to analyse the preliminary delimitation
report and also contained submissions by legislators during debate. It was
approved by the National Assembly and the Senate.
President Mnangagwa is today expected to hand over this
report to ZEC to consider issues raised by Parliament as required by law.
Speaking to journalists after a chamber hearing yesterday,
Professor Lovemore Madhuku, who is representing Mr Chidawu confirmed the court
ruling.
“The Chief Justice (Luke Malaba) has ruled that the matter
should proceed as an ordinary court application because at this stage it will
be premature for the court to determine the matter,” he said.
He said the application was meant to put Parliament on the
spot for failure to fulfil its constitutional obligation.
Prof Madhuku said his client furnished Parliament with
copies of documents alleging that the report which was submitted to be tabled
in Parliament was not a report of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission but by a
portion of the ZEC, the chair and deputy chair, but Parliament went on to
debate the report.
“That is the allegation and he (Chidawu) wants Parliament
to investigate that but refused and proceeded to debate the report and they
took their results to the President,” he said.
“By failing to investigate my client is saying that it’s a
failure to fulfil the constitutional obligation to bring state institutions to
account.”
Prof Madhuku added that if the issue raised by his client
was determined in his favour it would mean that all the processes that
Parliament undertook and everything that followed would be null and void. Prof
Madhuku said they were also calling ZEC to do a delimitation which involves all
commissioners.
Mr Chidawu’s application contained affidavits from two ZEC
commissioners. He alleges that the preliminary report was not approved by seven
of the nine ZEC commissioners hence should not have been sent to the President.
Parliament debated the draft delimitation report and
yesterday handed its recommendations to President Mnangagwa for onward
transmission to ZEC which will now have to produce a final delimitation report.
In terms of the Constitution, the delimitation of
constituency boundaries must be done at least six months before the elections.
In the event that it is completed less than six months to
an election, the delimitation report cannot be considered for that election but
a future election. Herald
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