Police blocked the entrance to Zimbabwe's High Court building in Harare on Saturday, preventing lawyers for the country's main opposition party from entering and pressing for the publication of presidential election results. Opposition lawyer Alec Muchadehama said a senior police officer wearing a shirt of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party said no one would be allowed into the building.The Movement for Democratic Change party wants the court to force Zimbabwe's electoral commission to publish the tally of the March 29 presidential vote. Results from legislative elections the same day, already released, show the MDC won, and early reports suggest the MDC also took the presidential vote, though not necessarily with the 50-per-cent-plus-one majority required to prevent a runoff.
MDC lawyer Andrew Makoni said the case has been postponed until Sunday. He said the commission had asked for more time to file papers contesting the request.
In another development on Saturday, the MDC appealed for the United Nations to intervene to prevent bloodshed in an expected presidential runoff campaign between Mugabe and MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai because it fears Mugabe will use brute force to try to retain power.
ZANU-PF said on Friday that it is endorsing Mugabe for a runoff presidential vote, which some media reports say could be held within three weeks. However, the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper on Friday said that Mugabe wanted to use his presidential powers to amend the Electoral Act to extend the runoff period to 90 days and rule by decree in the interim.
| Three weeks not being enough to ensure he can steal the run-off ... |
A series of police raids on opposition offices were carried out on Thursday, a day after the returns from the legislative election showed Mugabe's party had lost control of the parliament's 210-member lower house.