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Poll unfair without citizens in diaspora, civil society says
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
March 20, 2008

http://fe32.news.sp1.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080320/wl_africa_afp/zimbabwevotesafrica

Johannesburg - Elections in Zimbabwe will not be free and fair with millions of citizens in the diaspora disenfranchised, a group of the country's civil societies said Thursday.

"We are very concerned that while the election process itself has been very uneven from the start, millions of Zimbabweans in the diaspora are unable to come and vote," Tapera Kapuya, spokesman for the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum, a coalition of several associations, told AFP after a media briefing.

"There are in excess of over four million people scattered all over, in South Africa, in the United Kingdom, in the United States and in Australia," Kapuya said.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said recently that it has recorded more than six million people, almost half of Zimbabwe's population, on its voters' roll who are not eligible to vote on March 29.

Zimbabwe's electoral law excludes anyone who has not been resident in a particular constituency or province or has been outside the country for more than a year from voting, a rule which many critics say favours Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party.

Economic hardship and fear of political victimisation in the past years in the southern African country has forced millions of its citizens to migrate, especially to neighbouring countries.

"It is horrendously unfair," Kapuya said. "Most of us are running away from political persecution and deplorable economic conditions which leave us finding ourselves looking for better life elsewhere."

Bishop Paul Verry of Johannesburg's Central Methodist Church which harbours hundreds of Zimbabwean refugees said the country was "at war with itself" by alienating its citizens from voting and excluding them from rebuilding the country.

"One would have hoped that they (refugees) will be taken back to be part of the reconstruction process. But citizens who are supposed to help reconstruct Zimbabwe are being alienated, ostracised, victimised when they go back," said the cleric.

"Elections are not free and fair when other people still fear for their lives."

Nixon Nyikadzino of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said his group was concerned about the ruling party's "politicising" food aid in the build-up to elections "and the militarisation of the elections" by allowing soldiers in the polling booths.

"This puts the electoral playing field unacceptably and undemocratically skewed to the advantage of the ruling party," Nyikadzino said.

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