South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has been asked to intervene in the upcoming Zimbabwean elections.
The MDC Alliance, led by Nelson Chamisa, is taking on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and has asked Ramaphosa for help.
This is the strongest sign yet that the results of this month's poll could be headed for a dispute.
Chamisa has accused the electoral body of running a sham process and has written to Ramaphosa for urgent intervention two weeks before the July 30 elections.
In an interview yesterday, Chamisa described the ZEC's poor handling of the election run-up as "legendary and incredible".
"There is an election process crisis in Zimbabwe. The only logical thing to do is for the AU and SADC to step in and help this country from plunging into disharmony," said Chamisa.
He demanded accountability and transparency from the electoral body.
He said the MDC had sent envoys into the region and were awaiting a response from Ramaphosa, who is chairman of the SADC.
"Our issue is on his desk ... there has to be a meeting of all critical players."
A source at the South African embassy in Harare confirmed yesterday that a letter was sent by the MDC Alliance to Ramaphosa.
"They just sent us a letter to No1 [Ramaphosa], without exact dates as to when those emissaries would be dispatched to South Africa. They put down their complaints and demands. It's lengthy," said the source.
Chamisa said the MDC Alliance "had gone through" the embassy to Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa's spokeswoman, Khusela Diko, said the president had yet to receive the letter because he was out of the country."Upon receipt of the letter, the president will determine the required action," she said.
This week Chamisa and other leaders of the coalition handed a petition to the ZEC following a street demonstration by MDC Alliance members.
ZEC chairwoman Priscilla Chigumba defended the commission's conduct.
"We received the petition from a particular party and we are in a process of compiling answers and we will answer them, but their petition is not different from previous petitions," she said.
The MDC Alliance said the electoral commission had blocked its access to the voters roll and had not allowed it to see the printing of ballot papers, and that there had been a data breach.
The MDC Alliance's claims of a data breach follow SMSes sent out on Monday by Zanu-PF calling on voters to back the ruling party.
Econet Wireless, the country's largest mobile operator, said it did not provide details of its subscribers to third parties. There had been speculation that mobile operators might have been coerced by Zanu-PF to provide it with subscriber numbers.
On Wednesday lawyer Owen Mafa approached the High Court in suing Econet Wireless, the ZEC, Zanu-PF and John Paradza, an aspiring parliamentarian, for "infringement of his right to privacy" by sending unsolicited SMSes to his phone, urging him to vote for Zanu-PF.Chigumba said that although the electoral commission faced several lawsuits, it would deliver a credible outcome.
"We will publish the number of ballot papers printed. We finished printing the presidential ballot papers and we are 50% on the National Assembly ones. We had procured the paper for ballot papers, but because of the large number of candidates it proved to be too little and we had to procure more with assistance from the government," said Chigumba.
"The reason why we keep having these disputes around these areas [ballot papers and printing] is that the law does not provide that members of the public or stakeholders be involved in this process. Our law says only ZEC can do that.
"We respect the democratic right of each and every Zimbabwean to approach any fora that they feel will give them the relief that they seek."
According to the ZEC, 5.6-million people are eligible to vote. The election results for the presidential contest will be announced on August 4 at the ZEC's national election centre in Harare.
Piers Pigou, the Southern Africa director for the International Crisis Group, said the complaints raised by the MDC Alliance were not peculiar to it alone but were shared by other opposition parties.
"We have heard complaints from other members of the opposition - the Rainbow Coalition and the Coalition of Democrats have complained about a whole range of issues.
"They have supported some aspects of the issues being raised, such as unfairness ... but they are largely masked by the scale of the MDC Alliance more than anything; they are drowned out by a coalition of much bigger interests," said Pigou.
Elton Mangoma, president of the Coalition of Democrats, said the ZEC was "playing games" by refusing to amend the voters roll and by denying opposition parties access to the ballot papers.
Gwinyayi Dzinesa, an independent peace and security researcher, said the MDC Alliance appeared to have learnt from past election battles.
"Rather than waiting for abortive post-election protest, the MDC Alliance has used the opening of Zimbabwe's political space to stage pre-election demonstrations against the ZEC's alleged bias."He said the alliance had a lot to lose from a fraudulent vote and has learnt to closely monitor whether the ZEC was conducting the electoral process in compliance with the constitution.
Meanwhile, the MDC Alliance has approached the courts to nullify postal voting, which took place in Bulawayo on Thursday at a police station.
It claims that police officers were forced to vote in front of their superiors.
Erasmus Makodza, the senior assistant police commissioner, said the voting process in Bulawayo was valid, free and fair.
"The postal voting process was done in accordance with the law. No one was coerced to vote in a certain manner.
"It's only that those parties making allegations are not privy to the Electoral Act," Makodza said...