Voting has ended in a rural Zimbabwe parliamentary by-election which analysts say is a key test for opponents of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party ahead of next year's presidential elections.
An estimated 22,000 people out of 40,000 registered voters cast their ballots in the two-day weekend election in Bikita West, 200 miles southeast of Harare. Counting is scheduled to begin tomorrow with a result announced later in the day.
Officials said the exercise was completed largely without incident, but police arrested three suspected supporters of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Saturday for stoning the vehicle of Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of liberation war veterans who spearheaded the ruling ZANU-PF party's election campaign.
The seat, in one of ZANU-PF's traditional rural strongholds, was won by the MDC in parliamentary elections last June, but fell vacant in November when its deputy died.
Political analyst Masipula Sithole said an MDC victory would indicated that the opposition had maintained progress in rural areas after making a near-clean sweep of urban seats in June.
That would not sit well with the ruling party ahead of the 2002 presidential elections, said Sithole, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
Bikita businessman Bonnie Pakai is seeking to retain the seat for the MDC, while ZANU-PF is fielding retired army colonel Claudius Makova, his party's losing candidate last year.
ZANU-PF, which has ruled Zimbabwe since the former Rhodesia won independence from Britain in 1980, in June only narrowly defeated the MDC, which won a 57 of 120 elected seats.
Both parties have alleged violence and intimidation against their supporters in Bikita West.
Makova told state media on Sunday that the MDC had prevented some of his supporters from going to vote, a charge the MDC denied.
Clashes between the two parties in the run-up to the vote killed one ZANU-PF supporter and left several other people injured.
At least 31 people, mostly MDC supporters, were killed in the run-up to the June poll. That violence was linked to the invasion of white-owned farms by self-styled war veterans backed by Mugabe. Reuters