President Mugabe yesterday said he will comply with the Constitutional Court ruling on Friday ordering him to proclaim dates for the harmonised elections and hold the polls before July 31, which judgment he described as fair. He said he would discuss with Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa to set the polling dates as soon as he returns home from Japan where he is attending the Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD) which ends today. The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces was speaking in an interview with Zimbabwean journalists covering the conference. “Well, that’s the ruling of the court and when the court gives a ruling and the ruling is a judgement and the judgement is meant to establish how people should react to it, there is only one way of reacting to it which is accepting the judgement by our nation,” said President Mugabe. “We accepted that judgement and we will work in accordance with that judgement.”
President Mugabe said those seeking an extension of the poll dates wanted the Global Political Agreement to continue, yet it was never meant to exist beyond 18 months.
“I am not delaying anything,” he said. “I will not accept that anymore. That’s their wish. We should forget this period and to forget it is to sink it by an election so we drown it out of our memory and say we will never do this again. It’s filthy, it’s filthy, it’s filthy.”
President Mugabe said the court was fair enough to give him enough time to announce the dates and hold the harmonised elections, saying he could have been ordered to hold them ‘tomorrow’.
“It is this decision now that we must obey and I don’t want to offend the law,” said President Mugabe.
Full Article: allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Mugabe to Comply With Election Ruling (Page 1 of 2).