MDC Cancels Campaign Rally

Zimbabwean News You Can Trust

The Douglas Mwonzora led MDC party has deferred their manifesto launch to a date to be announced.

In a statement, the MDC said it failed to conduct the launch because of a pending court case involving 87 of its house assembly candidates who were denied registration for the August 2023 Harmonized elections.

The manifesto launch was scheduled for July 8.

“The MDC regrets to announce the deferment of our Manifesto launch, originally scheduled for Saturday the 8th of July 2023. This has been necessitated by our solidarity with the ongoing urgent court case involving our 87 House of Assembly candidates.

“We can not proceed with our manifesto and campaign launch without knowing the fate of the majority of our candidates, who were unfairly disqualified by ZEC,” reads the statement.

The announcement comes after the party’s recent loss as it sought to force the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to register 87 of its aspiring MPs, who were rejected by the nomination court on June 21 after allegedly failing to pay candidates’ nomination fees.

The Nomination Court rejected 87 of the MDC-T’s candidates after the party tried a system of “centralised payment” where it wanted to pay ZEC for all its candidates in one transaction, instead of giving money to individual candidates in the same way that other parties did.

Candidates for Parliament were required to pay US$1,000 or the equivalent in Zimbabwe dollars.

Justice Webster Chinamhora of the Harare High Court, sitting as an Electoral Court, recently said he had no jurisdiction to deal with the matter.