BEIJING (Reuters) – French people in Shanghai will not be able to vote in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday due to the confinement imposed in the Chinese city in the face of a resurgence of the COVID-19 epidemic, announced on Friday. French Embassy in Beijing.
Repeated approaches to Chinese authorities to obtain permission to open a polling station at the French consulate and for voters and polling station workers to be allowed to leave their homes failed, the embassy said.
“Unfortunately, the Shanghai authorities replied on April 7 that ‘given the serious and complicated situation in Shanghai, it is objectively impossible to fulfill the conditions for the organization by your consulate of the election, for the safety of all people residing in Shanghai’,” the embassy said on its WeChat account.
Shanghai authorities and the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The city of Shanghai has about 26 million inhabitants, including 4,848 French voters registered in December, according to the embassy. The city is under lockdown to fight China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since the pandemic began in Wuhan more than two years ago.
“It’s a great frustration because it’s a right we have and we have never missed a single election,” said David Iosub, 47, a Parisian who has lived with his family in Shanghai for eight years.
Polling stations in six other cities across China, including Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, will open as scheduled.
(Report Martin Quin Pollard, French version Lou Phily)
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