July 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe has annulled this Wednesday the candidacy of former minister Savior Kasukuwere, who planned to run for the presidential elections on August 23, in which the current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, will seek re-election.
The court has indicated that Kasukuwere cannot run for president because the Constitution establishes that a candidate must have habitually resided in the country during the 18 months prior to the vote in order to go to the polls, according to what the newspaper reported. Zimbabwean ‘The Herald’.
The decision comes just weeks after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission accepted the candidacy of Kasukuwere, who was a former youth minister during Robert Mugabe’s tenure between 1980 and 2017.
The politician, a Mugabe ally, fled the country after the 2017 military coup that brought Mnangagwa to power. Although he returned to the country in 2018, he returned to South Africa shortly after denouncing that he was the target of a campaign of political persecution by the new authorities.
The electoral commission had endorsed a total of eleven candidacies – without including any woman. Leading candidates include Mnangagwa and opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, who has refused to acknowledge the president’s victory in the 2018 election.
