LONDON: A high court ruling in Lusaka on Wednesday that in effect awarded Zambia’s violently disputed presidential election to former vice-president Levy Mwanawasa is unlikely to be the end of the matter. Mwanawasa, hastily sworn in within minutes of the court’s decision, was unkindly nicknamed “the Cabbage” after suffering head injuries in a car crash in 1993.

His rivals ridiculed him mercilessly during the campaign, seizing on gaffes such as his description of outgoing president Frederick Chiluba as his “sister”. Mwanawasa may only have made matters worse when he later insisted that he was as healthy as the American boxer “Tike Myson”. But questions about the new president’s fitness to govern may be the least of Zambia’s immediate political worries.

Thwarted opposition leaders reject the result of last week’s poll, which they (and EU monitors) say was fraudulent, and have vowed to continue to challenge the outcome in the courts and on the streets. The runner-up, Anderson Mazoka, only 1 per cent behind with 27 per cent of the vote, has declared himself president.

Amid these recriminations and despite the hostility of at least 70 per cent of voters, the new Movement for Multiparty Democracy administration may now find itself obliged to form Zambia’s first coalition government. Pressing problems concerning rural poverty, unemployment, AIDS and official corruption may meanwhile only get worse.

For this very sorry state of affairs, Chiluba bears much responsibility. His unconstitutional and ultimately futile effort to obtain a third presidential term split the MMD last spring. Several potentially more able, popular successors were forced out of office. When recalled, Mwanawasa was seen (not entirely fairly) as the kingmaker president’s puppet. Like his neighbour, Robert Mugabe, Chiluba has injured democratic governance. As in Zimbabwe, one question is what, if anything, Britain, the Commonwealth and the EU will do about it. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.