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Zimbabwe sets up electoral court ahead of polls
Stella Mapenzauswa, Reuters
February 22, 2005

http://www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp?type=topNews&localeKey=en_ZA&storyID=7701922

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government has set up an electoral court to handle legal matters arising from a general election due next month, the official Herald newspaper said on Tuesday.

In a sign of rising tension ahead of the poll, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change said soldiers attacked a group of its members on their way back to the capital from the party's election campaign launch at the weekend.

The government has made reforms it says will ensure a free poll on March 31, but the MDC says the rules are still skewed in favour of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party, and that state security agents have sought to hamper its campaign activities.

Zimbabwe's top judge, Godfrey Chidyausiku, appointed High Court judges Tendayi Uchena, Maphios Cheda and Nicholas Ndou to the new court to hear election petitions, the Herald reported.

"The Electoral Court is now in place and the administrative machinery is also in place. We are now ready to deal with election matters," the paper quoted the court's registrar as saying.

Court officials were not immediately reachable for comment.

The MDC, running in this year's polls under protest, has complained that courts dragged their feet over most legal challenges it launched against ZANU-PF victories in 2000 parliamentary elections and a presidential vote two years later. The ruling party insists it won fairly.

The MDC said on Tuesday a group of soldiers had attacked party officials on their way back to Harare at the weekend after attending the party's campaign launch in the southern town of Masvingo.

"The matter was reported to police but to date no arrests have been made," the party said in a statement.

Police and army officials were not immediately reachable for comment, but both departments have in the past denied allegations of bias levelled by the opposition.

The MDC said a member of its youth wing sustained a suspected fractured leg during a confrontation with a group of ZANU-PF supporters in southwestern Zimbabwe while he was putting up MDC campaign posters.

The police rushed to the scene and detained two ZANU-PF members including the brother of the ZANU-PF candidate for the area, the party said.

Critics say Mugabe has failed to deliver on international demands for wide-ranging democratic electoral reforms and he has put in place a set of cosmetic measures designed to extend his ZANU-PF party's 25-year grip on power.

Mugabe dismisses the charges, and says the West, led by former colonial ruler Britain, is bent on forcing him from power over his controversial seizure of white-owned farms for landless blacks.

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