Mali opposition cries foul
Malian opposition candidate Soumaila Cisse said on Monday he would reject the results of a presidential runoff marred by accusations of fraud, violence and low turnout, calling on the population to rise up.
Ballot counting continued on Tuesday across the vast West African country.
Sunday’s vote saw one poll worker killed and hundreds of stations closed due to fear.
“The fraud is proven, this is why there are results we will not accept,” Cisse said.
“I call on all Malians to rise up. We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud.”
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, is the clear frontrunner in a reprise of his 2013 faceoff against former finance minister Cisse, 68.
But Cisse’s team and other opposition contenders have repeatedly accused the government of fraud, including ballotbox stuffing and vote buying.
However, African Union election observers said the voting had been carried out in acceptable conditions.
At this stage there is “no tangible element” pointing towards voting irregularities, the observers said, congratulating the Malian government for its efforts to improve the voting process and noting a drop in the number of untoward incidents in the second round of voting.
The European Union also said that in the 300 polling stations its observers visited, no major incident had occurred.
Nearly 500 polling stations were unable to open on Sunday, the government said, mostly in regions plagued by jihadist violence and ethnic tensions.
In a reminder of the jihadist threat that was a major campaign issue, the overseer of a polling station in Arkodia, in the northern region of Timbuktu, was shot dead on Sunday by armed Islamist militants, local officials said.
Aside from this case, the government, said the poll had occurred without incident.
National turnout, however, was just 22.38%, local monitors of the POCIM (the Mali Citizen Observation Pool) said.
In the first-round vote on July 29, Keita was clearly ahead, with 42% against 18% for Cisse.
Despite fierce criticism of Keita for his handling of the security crisis, Cisse failed to rally the support of other parties behind him for the runoff, leaving the incumbent seemingly on track for a second consecutive landslide.
Results are expected by midweek at the earliest.
The three main opposition candidates had mounted a lastditch legal challenge to the firstround result, alleging ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities but their petition was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
Mali, home to at least 20 ethnic groups where the majority of people live on less than $2 (R28) a day, has battled jihadist attacks and intercommunal violence for years.
A state of emergency heads into its fourth year in November. –