MDC to contest Justice Hlatshwayo’s appointment in petitions
The MDC yesterday said it planned contesting the appointment of Justice Ben Hlatshwayo to preside over election petitions filed by the party in the High Court.
Learnmore Jongwe, the MDC’s secretary for information and publicity said the party’s legal team would be meeting this week to see if there were any ‘right signals from His Lordship (Hlatshwayo)’s office showing that he was declining presiding over the cases’.
On Friday The Zimbabwe Independent reported that two High Court judges Justices Hlatshwayo and Rita Makarau would preside over electoral petitions in which the MDC is contesting the results of the June 2000 parliamentary election. Justice James Devittie, who had heard some of the cases resigned last month, citing a desire to devote his efforts in the area of judicial and legal reform, with the assistance of the Law Development Commission.
He heard and subsequently nullified three electoral results in Buhera North, Hurungwe East and Mutoko South, which Zanu PF had won.
Jongwe said Hlatshwayo must recuse himself from the electoral petitions. He said: ‘If the judge does not recuse himself, the MDC would request him to do so through normal court procedures.’ Jongwe said: ‘In the event that His Lordship finds it impossible or unnecessary for him to recuse himself, we will no doubt be placed in an unenviable embarrassing situation of having to request that he recuses himself.
The party sympathises with those raising serious concerns about Justice Hlatshwayo’s impartiality, as the public’s perception of him is that he is one of the ruling party’s functionaries on the bench.’
Jongwe alleged Hlatshwayo was sympathetic to Zanu PF. ‘The general feeling of the public is that given the role he played on behalf of both the ruling party and the government in the Constitutional Commission which the MDC and other stakeholders successfully campaigned against, and his perceived personal friendship with Zanu PF’s deputy chief spokesperson, Professor Jonathan Moyo, he may not be an objective arbiter in a dispute involving the MDC and the ruling party. It is imperative that justice should not only be done but should be seen to be done.’
According to The Zimbabwe Independent, the High Court appointed Hlatshwayo and Makarau to preside over the election petitions after most senior judges allegedly refused to handle the cases. The move to assign more judges to handle the hearings follows months of fighting between the MDC’s legal department and the High Court registrar, Jacob Manzungu, accused of delaying hearings on the petitions.
The Judge president, Justice Paddington Garwe, yesterday said he could not comment as he was in Kenya on business for the next 10 days. He referred all the questions to Justice Vernanda Ziyambi. Justice Ziyambi declined to comment saying that she did not talk to the Press. Efforts to contact Justice Hlatshwayo for comment yesterday were fruitless.
-The Daily News
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on June 25, 2001. Filed under Politics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Socialize
