"NELSON CHAMISA WILL LOSE HIS ELECTORAL CHALLENGE" - ADVOCATE DALI MPOFU

Jameson Timba, the man who mysteriously disappeared as Chamisa's Chief Election Agent on the day of the announcement of the election results, with Morgan Komichi claiming to be the Chief Election agent, is seen here in his trademark bowler hat on Friday as he filed the Nelson Chamisa's challenge to the election and their results at the Constitutional Court in Harare.

Nelson Chamisa's electoral challenge, filed this last Friday, August 10 2018, is so embarrassing that in any other court of law, he would have been fined for wasting the court's time, one Nelson Chamisa's own lawyers, Advocate Dali Mpofu, has allegedly told his comrades in the Economic Freedom Front of South Africa.

Mpofu is also the Chairman of Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Front. Malema has congratulated Emmerson Mnangagwa on his electoral victory and urged Nelson Chamisa to accept the results and move on.

Malema and the EFF are natural allies of ZANU PF and the two are in constant communication.

Our information is that Mpofu, in conversation with his comrades in the EFF, has made it clear that he thinks the challenge by Chamisa was simply an attempt to humiliate or frustrate Mnangagwa by having his inauguration postponed.

Mnangagwa and ZANU PF, however, had never really thought the inauguration would go ahead today, Sunday, 12 August 2018. Which explains why Vice President Chiwenga went ahead with a visit to Russia anyway on the day the court challenge was filed by the MDC Alliance team. He left before the MDC had filed its papers.

According to reliable sources within the ZANU PF administration, Mpofu alleged that even Nelson Chamisa is aware that his court challenge does not hold any water and will fail at the Constitutional Court.

"The real purpose of the court challenge is not to have another election nor is it to have Chamisa declared the winner," our source has Dali Mpofu saying, "Instead, the MDC (Alliance) made it clear that the entire purpose of the court challenge is to perpetuate the the impression that the election was stolen in the minds of Chamisa's supporters. They believe this is one way in which they can prepare for the next elections in 5 years time, by having their supporters so angry and motivated that they repeat the turnout in 2023."

The biggest fear within the Chamisa camp is that their support base will become demotivated and deflated after this defeat. This would lead to the familiar Tsvangirai syndrome, where opposition supporters never bothered to really to turn out in numbers because they believed that their vote would not count and ZANU PF would win by hook or by crook.

The challenge by Chamisa is two-pronged:

The first thrust is that the election should be nullified because of procedural defects. In other words, he is arguing that the process broke several laws and procedures.

Chamisa throws everything, including the kitchen sink, into this argument.

Justice Priscilla Chigumba's scarf is mentioned. The design of the ballot paper is also thrown in there. Failure to provide the voters' roll with pictures of voters is also part of the argument.

None of this will make a difference, however, because none of this constitutes a breach of the law.

Crucially, Chigumba's pedantic observance of the law will actually save the day for her and ZEC in this case. The law says ZEC has sole responsibility for things like designing of the ballot paper, transportation and storage as well as security of the ballot paper.

The second prong by Chamisa is designed to throw doubt on the figures themselves as announced.

Problem here is that Chamisa does not have all the facts.

Take his complaint that the ZEC did not avail V23B forms to Nelson Chamisa and his agents.

Even if this were case, there is no law that this should be be done. That's because the law envisages a situation provided for at law: that the candidates and parties will have agents at polling stations and constituency collation centers to sign off on these figures. They are allowed to do this, but it is not a legal requirement, just a provision at law to enhance transparency and credibility.

The fact that Chamisa did not have agents at most of these centers is not the fault of ZEC, nor is it grounds to have the election invalidated.  His agents were supposed to be present, and to have signed these. Failure to do so in no way takes away ZEC's legal mandate as the "sole authority" with the mandate to do the counting, collation and announcement of the results, with no interference from anybody.

Chamisa also tried to stop the announcement of the results by frustrating the process through his Chief Election Agents refusing to certify the results. This would have been fine if they were refusing to certify them on the basis of figures that they themselves had.

But they did not have the results. They did not have figures.

All they were trying to do was delay the process as they ran around the country trying to gather V11 and V23B forms that they had not managed to get hold of. One of Chamisa's own lawyers, Doug Coltart, son of former Education Minister David Coltart, was on social media asking the public to submit these under the guise of an MDC Alliance front called Citizen Manifesto. It was made to look as though these were needed for that organisation's public website, where they were collating these for the public to see.

Even as they went to court, the MDC Alliance had in its possession polling station results for less than 400 000 people (or votes). Less than four hundred thousand.

All the figures they have in their court challenge, Dali Mpofu is alleged to have said, are thumb-sucked. Plucked out of thin air.

The alleged reading of the situation by Dali Mpofu chimes perfectly with Nelson Chamisa's own words before the vote took place. He stated that he would "pour sand onto the meal" if things did not go his way. Which basically means he would seek to be a spoilsport, not so that he could win, but so that there would be no perceived winner, achieving a "lose-lose scenario".

The verdict of the court should be in soon enough. A decent interval is needed, obviously, so that people do not complain that the court "rushed to dismiss the case."