JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 79 ____________________________________________________________________ deliberately in order to gain an unfair advantage over him in the presidential election. If these arguments were valid, then the President was acting illegally in violation of the applicant’s clear constitutional right to protection of the law. Such violation would obviously prejudice him in the election. The applicant was therefore entitled to a ruling from the Supreme Court about the legality or otherwise of the purported last minute changes to the electoral laws made by the President before the election. The Supreme Court was duty bound to rule on the merits. As the laws being challenged were passed just before the election and the matter could only be placed before the Supreme Court at the eleventh hour before the election was to be held, the Supreme Court should have treated the case as one of extreme urgency. It should have handed down its judgment as quickly as possible and, if necessary, have given its verdict with the full reasons to follow later. There is no doubt that the Supreme Court composed of the judges who were sitting when Mr Justice Gubbay was still Chief Justice would have had no hesitation in finding that the applicant had legal standing in this matter, as Sandura JA indeed found. Apart from protection of law, it would have been relatively easy for a court that was not intent on excluding the case on an artificial basis, to have found that there was legal standing on the basis of the freedom of expression provision. The right of freedom of expression includes the right to receive and impart information without interference. An election is one of the most important ways in which the electorate can express its will. The distortion and manipulation of the electoral process violates this free expression of electoral will. The main opposition candidate in an election has himself a right to expect that voters will be able to express themselves in a free and fair election. Thus he should be taken to have a right to take legal action to ensure that his and the electorate’s rights are not violated. As Sandura JA said in his dissenting judgment, the Supreme Court should, as it had done previously, have adopted a broad approach to legal standing in a case of this nature in order to determine the real issues raised where the applicant has a real and substantial interest in the matter. This was particularly the case here, as the election was on the verge of taking place and even if someone could have been found who satisfied the exacting requirements for legal standing set by the majority of the Supreme Court, it would have been too late to take the matter back to court before the election. It was clearly of great importance that there should be a ruling in this case before the elections took place.