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Electoral agency rules out postponement of polls in Zimbabwe
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
January 06, 2008

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080106/wl_africa_afp/zimbabwepoliticsvote

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe's electoral agency said it has concluded the delimitation of constituency boundaries for the March elections and ruled out postponment of the polls, state media reports said Sunday.

George Chiweshe, chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, said the commission said the agency would soon present a preliminary report on the exercise to President Robert Mugabe, the Sunday Mail reported. "What is left, however, is to polish up the preliminary report, which we will soon present to the president," Chiweshe was quoted as saying.

He said the commission had created more than 2,000 boundaries for the local government wards, adding that "the boundaries should make sense and should be reasonable enough so as not to cause confusion."

The March joint presidential and parliamentary elections will result in an increase in the membership of the House of Assembly from 150 members to 210, and the Senate from 66 to 93.

About 5.6 million Zimbabweans have so far registered for the polls in which Mugabe, 83, who has been in office since the nation's independence in 1980, has been endorsed as the ruling ZANU-PF ruling party's sole presidential candidate.

Zimbabwe has a population of about 13 million people.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has previously charged that the ruling party was trying to rig the election "through a biased and opaque voter registration that sought to disenfranchise the young population and urban voters where the opposition enjoys majority support."

The MDC has suggested the election be deferred but the chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission maintained that it would go ahead as planned.

"The focus is on the elections being held in March...There have been suggestions that the commission should wait for the respective parties (ZANU-PF and MDC) involved in the dialogue to conclude their dialogue," Chiweshe said.

Regional bloc SADC last March mandated South African President Thabo Mbeki to broker dialogue between the opposition and the government.

"But we do not work like that. We simply consider the law and we know that harmonisation of the elections has been captured in the law accordingly. If any changes are to be made, they should be reflected in law," Chiweshe said.

Under the constitution, an estimated three million exiled Zimbabweans will not be allowed to vote.

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