HARARE - Zimbabweâ€™s High Court said yesterday it has jurisdiction to decide on an opposition bid to force the release of presidential election results, but delayed the case until today, an opposition lawyer said.

Since Saturday, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been trying to accelerate the release of the results. The party says its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the election and thus should be declared president, ending the 28-year rule of Robert Mugabe.

MDC lawyer Alec Muchadehama told reporters the court would rule on Tuesday on whether the case should be heard urgently. â€œI think ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) just wants to delay this whole thing,â€ he said.

The court had adjourned the case on Sunday to decide on the commissionâ€™s argument that it did not have jurisdiction. The commission is resisting the oppositionâ€™s attempt to force release of the result and Mugabeâ€™s ruling ZANU-PF party wants an announcement of the outcome to be delayed pending a recount.

The opposition says Mugabe is trying to delay the result to give him more time to organise a fight back after his first electoral defeat, when ZANU-PF lost a parallel parliamentary election. As the court case continued, Tsvangirai went to South Africa after saying Zimbabwe was on a razorâ€™s edge and appealing for intervention by Pretoria, the US and Britain.

â€œMajor powers, such as South Africa, the US and Britain, must act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabeâ€™s suicidal reign and oblige him and his minions to retire,â€ Tsvangirai wrote in Britainâ€™s Guardian newspaper. But South African President Thabo Mbeki said at the weekend the post-election situation there was â€œmanageableâ€.

ZANU-PF and independent monitorsâ€™ projections show Tsvangirai has won the presidential election, but will be forced into a runoff vote after failing to win an absolute majority. ZANU-PFâ€™s strategy to stay in power includes legal challenges to some of the parliamentary results and the mobilisation of pro-government militias before any runoff.

The re-emergence of liberation war veterans, often used as political shock troops by Mugabe, has increased concern that he plans a violent response to his election setback. On Saturday, Tsvangirai accused the 84-year-old former guerrilla leader of â€œpreparing a war on the peopleâ€.

Electoral rules say a runoff must be held three weeks after the release of results, meaning the longer the delay the more time Mugabe has to regroup.

Mugabeâ€™s government is widely accused in the West of stealing previous elections, and his removal is regarded by Washington and London as necessary to rebuilding Zimbabweâ€™s shattered economy.

Reuters

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By NewVision Reporter

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