VOTING in a hotly contested parliamentary by-election began quietly on Saturday in the rural Zimbabwean constituency of Bindura, after months of campaigning marred by widespread violence. The election is the latest test for President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, pitted against the two-year-old Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). MDC candidate Elliot Pfebve is again trying to unseat Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which is fielding provincial governor Elliot Manyika as its candidate. The by-election was called after the death of in a car crash of Border Gezi, a minister and parliamentarian who orchestrated the Zanu-PF’s national election campaign that ended in only a narrow victory for Mugabe’s party. Gezi won his own race by a hair, with 13_329 ballots to Pfebve’s 11_257. The constituency, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of the capital Harare, suffered some of the worst violence ahead of last year’s parliamentary election. – AFP