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Tendai Rupapa Senior Court—- Reporter
The State has criticised MDC–T chief elections agent Morgan Komichi’s lawyer Mr Alec Muchadehama for failing to attend court yesterday.
The trial, which was supposed to continue yesterday had to be differed to today after Mr Muchadehama’s no show. Law officer from the Attorney General’s office Mr Michael Mugabe had no kind words for Mr Muchadehama whom he accused of being disrespectful of the court.
“Your Worship, I am surprised as to why Mr Muchadehama is not in court yet we agreed last week on Friday that the matter will continue today (yesterday). I have been trying to get hold of him on his mobile, but to no avail.

I even sent him a message but he did not respond.
“I heard that he has another matter at the High court. Although we know that High Court matters take precedence over other matters at the lower courts but for the defence to just go without notifying the court is not being courteous.

“This simply shows that he has no respect for this court. He should have at least sent someone from his law firm to notify the court of the development. Now I do not know whether to roll over the matter to tomorrow (today) or stand it down to 2:15pm. I therefore seek guidance from the court,” he said.

Presiding magistrate Mr Tendai Mahwe then asked Komichi if he knew the whereabouts of his lawyer but Mr Komichi said Mr Muchadehama had not communicated with him adding that he might have encountered a problem. Mr Mahwe said Mr Muchadehama was supposed to appear before him in the morning in a different matter involving four MDC-T ‘docket’ officials but did not show up. He said Mr Chris Mhike who stood in for him told the court that Mr Muchadehama was attending to another matter at the High Court.

However, Mr Mahwe ruled that the court could not rely on that information which was provided by Mr Mhike arguing that Komichi’s case was different from the one in question.

The matter was deffered to today.
Komichi was arrested on July 28 on allegations of misrepresenting to Zec that he had ‘picked up’ from a dust bin, a sealed tamper-proof envelope with a special vote ballot paper at the Harare International Conference Centre.

Komichi allegedly approached Zec deputy director of public relations Mr Tendai Pamire and told him that an unnamed person informed him that they had picked an envelope from a dustbin at the HICC where the special vote was being processed.

He further alleged that he had opened it out of curiosity and discovered that there were ballot papers cast by the police in favour of MDC-T by Constable Mugove Chiginya.

The commission reported the matter to the police and investigations showed that Cst Chiginya had failed to vote in the special voting exercise as his name had not been called out by the presiding officer.+