Published: 18 October 2019

MDC secretary for elections Jacob Mafume, pictured, has said the party will use all legal channels to make sure that people in the diaspora vote in 2023. Mafume told the Daily News that his party will approach the Constitutional Court to compel the authorities to allow diasporans to vote.

"We had a meeting as the party's election department and we agreed that we are going to the Constitutional Court; we want people in the diaspora to vote. We are going also to push this through Parliament so that these people are not disadvantaged. They must participate in elections.

"Millions of Zimbabweans are out of the country and they must decide the future of their country because they want to return back to Zimbabwe," he said.

This comes after Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said government will soon carry out a study to ascertain the number of people living in the diaspora.

"We want to commission a study to see how other jurisdictions are implementing the diaspora vote and hopefully we will be done by June 2020," said Ziyambi.

"Once we have seen how others do it, we will then be able to make a decision on whether we need to amend the law to give effect to it or not," he said.

The current laws do not allow people living in the diaspora to vote and it only gives voting rights to Zimbabweans who are outside the country on official government assignments.
- dailynews

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