Official: Zimbabwean voters' roll "100 per cent perfect"

Jun 18, 2011, 7:37 GMT

Harare - There was no other country in the world with a voters' roll that was 'as 100 percent perfect' as Zimbabwe's, the country's registrar-general has said, the state-run Herald newspaper reported on Saturday.

Tobaiwa Mude-de said Zimbabwe's electoral register had 'nominal percentage error margins' and said his office was happy to allow critics to inspect the roll.

Critics have accused President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party of manipulating the list for political advantage and say it includes children and people who have long since died.

A report published earlier this month by the South Africa-based Institute of Security Studies (ISS) said there 41,119 centenarians registered to vote in the country.

There were officially four times as many centenarians in Zimbabwe as in Britain, the report, titled Preventing Electoral Fraud in Zimbabwe said, despite the European nation enjoying a much higher ife expectancy than its former colony.

Zimbabwe's average life expectancy is just 34 for women and 37 for men, according to the World Health Organization.

'You don't want these people to attain 100 years, you don't want them to be alive?' Mude-de said. 'The law does not say once one attains 100 years he/she should be removed. It is their right to vote unless they come to say they want to be removed. We will, however, still advise them that it is their right to vote,' he said.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, whose Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is in a power sharing government with Zanu-PF, has insisted on a fresh voters' roll before the next elections.

'I am not sure why he would want to defend such a shameful document,' said MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora. 'No one serious person will spend a second defending it. How can you allow ghosts to be on a voters' roll?'