Court dismisses MDC appeal over voters' roll

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Thursday said it would continue to challenge the results of the March presidential election despite losing a court appeal for a computerised list of the voters' roll. "We are surprised that the Supreme Court has dismissed such a simple request but then again we have been saying that the judiciary in this country has been compromised. An electronic copy of the voters' roll is the best way of facilitating our investigations into irregularities and duplications in the rolls," MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai told IRIN. Tsvangirai said alleged discrepancies in the voters' roll were integral to the MDC's broader court challenge of the election result. "Eventually, we will get a hard copy of the voters' roll. And although our work will be made a lot harder, since we will have to employ more manpower to photocopy and scan them [voters' rolls] into digital format for computer analysis, we will push on. This is a mere delay. The government hopes the challenge will go away but it won't," Tsvangirai added. No date has yet been set for the court case.