Zambian opposition go to court

LUSAKA: Zambia’s main opposition leader filed a court petition on Friday challenging President Edgar Lungu’s re-election at the helm of Africa’s second-largest copper producer, saying the vote was rigged.

The southern African nation’s economy is buckling under weakened commodity prices, mine closures, rising unemployment, power shortages and soaring food prices that Lungu’s rival, Hakainde Hichilema, blames on the current administration.

“We have filed the petition. We are asking for the nullification of the election,” Gilbert Phiri, a lawyer for Hichilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND), told reporters.

Lungu and the electoral commission, an independent state agency set up by the constitution, who are among the respondents named in the petition, have rejected Hichilema’s accusation that fraud discredited the August 11 vote.

Lungu’s inauguration has been postponed because a rule introduced in January says the winner of a presidential vote cannot be sworn in if the vote is contested in a court, which will have two weeks to decide on such a petition.

In the petition, Hichilema, an economist and businessman and an old rival of Lungu, says that the president did not win the election legally. To win, a candidate must garner 50 percent of the votes cast plus at least one additional vote.

“(Lungu) did not receive more than 50 percent of the votes cast,” he said. –Reuters