Komichi to call witness | The Herald

via Komichi to call witness | The Herald October 29, 2013

MDC–T chief elections agent Morgan Komichi, who is facing charges of fraud and contravening the country’s electoral laws, is set to call his witness to help him prove his case.His lawyer Mr Alec Muchadehama told the court that Komichi’s witness is currently out of Zimbabwe while another witness could not testify because he had attended the trial and heard most of the evidence led in court.

Harare magistrate Mr Tendai Mahwe postponed the matter to November 1. Appearing for the State, chief law officer Mr Michael Mugabe alleges that on July 25, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson Justice Rita Makarau was sitting with other officials in a boardroom committee room at the Harare International Conference Centre when Komichi is alleged to have approached ZEC deputy director public relations Mr Tendai Pamire and told him he had an issue to raise with the chairperson who agreed to meet him.

In the meeting, Komichi alleged that an unnamed person had informed him that they had picked up an envelope containing ballot papers from a dustbin at the HICC where the special vote was being processed.

The ballot paper he produced belonged to a policeman Mugove Chiginya who had allegedly voted in favour of MDC-T. ZEC allegedly noted that all the ballot papers did not have the presiding officer’s mark and that two were marked SV while the presidential ballot paper was not marked SV.

ZEC reported the matter and investigations showed that Chiginya had failed to vote in the special voting exercise. Mr Mugabe alleges that Komichi fraudulently took, opened or otherwise interfered with a pack of ballot papers endorsed in a grey tamper proof plastic which he alleges were allocated to Constable Chiginya.