Supreme Court hears case by exiled voters

Supreme Court hears case by exiled voters

• Website: Diaspora Vote Action Group

• Zim exiles petition Supreme Court over vote

• Chinamasa says exiles will NOT vote

• Zimbabwe hints at postal voting for 3,5 million exiles

• Zimbabwe says civil servants to monitor polls

• Mugabe puts military in centre of election

• Zim opposition demands voters' roll review

• MDC cries foul as constituencies erased

• MDC: 'Delimitation an exercise in deception'

• Zimbabwe voters' roll 'inflated by a million'

• Mugabe bars Western observers from polls

• Sparks fly over voters' roll tampering

• Zimbabwe bars election observers

• 'Mugabe's compliance the litmus test for SADC protocol on democratic polls'

By MacDonald Dzirutwe

ZIMBABWE'S top court on Wednesday heard a bid by a group of citizens abroad seeking to vote in March parliamentary polls, a move President Robert Mugabe's government fears could lead to more ballots for the opposition.

Under Zimbabwe's electoral laws only citizens outside their home constituencies on official national duty can cast postal votes -- a requirement critics say has disenfranchised more than three million Zimbabweans living abroad.

A lawyer for a group of Zimbabweans living in Britain -- the Diaspora Vote Action Group -- told the Supreme Court that by denying those abroad the right to vote in the March 31 elections, Mugabe's government was denying citizens a fundamental constitutional right.

The lawyer, Happias Zhou, asked the five-member Supreme Court bench to order the authorities to expedite overseas voting in time for the March polls.

In defence, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa -- represented by a state lawyer at the court -- argued that Mugabe's government had not deliberately deprived Zimbabweans abroad of their vote, saying they were welcome to cast ballots if they came home.

The state also said that even if it wanted to allow Zimbabweans to vote abroad, travel bans imposed by the West on Mugabe's top ZANU-PF officials would make it difficult for ruling party candidates to campaign in those countries, giving an unfair advantage to the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

"The practical logistical problems cannot allow Zimbabwe under its current economical and political situation to allow voters in the diaspora to vote," it said.

Zimbabwe's electoral roll has 5.6 million names on it, but it is not clear how many of those people have joined the growing flow of Zimbabweans moving overseas amid the country's worst political and economic crisis in decades.

Critics say Mugabe's government wants to block Zimbabweans abroad from voting because it fears they will support the MDC.

The MDC has already alleged that electoral conditions are skewed in favour of the ruling ZANU-PF party, which it accuses of rigging parliamentary polls in 2000 and a presidential vote won by Mugabe two years later.

Mugabe says he won fairly and has declared that next month's elections will bury the MDC, a party he says is a puppet of former colonial power Britain.

Meanwhile MDC legislator Roy Bennett, who was jailed for 12 months by parliament last October after a scuffle with Chinamasa during a debate, has applied to the newly appointed electoral court to be allowed to contest next month's elections.

Bennett's lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said her client had challenged an official panel's decision to reject his candidacy and asked the High Court to order his immediate release for good behaviour - Reuters
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