24 December 2007
JOHANNESBURG – Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders should persuade President Robert Mugabe’s government to allow millions of exiled Zimbabweans to vote by post in elections next year, one of the country’s largest pro-democracy groups said on Thursday.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections could not be deemed free and fair if the millions of Zimbabweans living and working abroad are denied the opportunity to vote.
An estimated three million Zimbabweans or a quarter of the country’s 12 million population are living outside the country after fleeing home because of economic hardships and political repression.
The majority of the exiles live in neighbouring countries such as South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, while large concentrations of Zimbabweans are also found in far away places such as Britain, Canada and the United States.
“ZESN calls on the regional leaders to engage with the Zimbabwean government to allow millions of Zimbabweans in their countries to vote in the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections,” the group’s national director, Rindai Chipfunde, told journalists in Johannesburg.
It was not possible to get an immediate reaction from the Zimbabwe government or its embassy in South Africa.
However, Mugabe’s government has in previous elections denied the exiles, most of who are believed to support the opposition, the opportunity to vote saying it did not have the resources to enable all Zimbabweans spread across the globe to vote.
Only Zimbabweans posted abroad on government duty have been able to vote by post in previous elections. - ZimOnline.
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