DISTRIBUTED BY VERITAS TRUST Tel: [263] [4] 794478 Fax & Messages [263] [4] 793592 E-mail: veritas@mango.zw Veritas makes every effort to ensure the provision of reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for information supplied. 18 (f) It would have addressed questions regarding the accuracy of the result and data provided by the Commission. In essence the entire challenge to the correctness of the figures relating to the result of the election would have been easily resolved. If there was any irregularity, it would have been easily detectable. When pressed why the primary source evidence was not adduced, the applicant’s practitioner gave a bald and unsubstantiated allegation that the election residue had been tampered with. It was argued by the applicant’s counsel that the residue was a poisoned chalice. In other words, by the time you would have sought to have the ballot boxes unsealed they would already have been manipulated. It was argued that such an exercise would have been futile. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission contends that the prescribed procedures were complied with. Logic therefore dictates that if the applicant and his agents (or any other political candidate whose agent had the forms) had the V11 forms in their custody, they could easily have compared them against the residue and further compared them against the result declared.