Keïta in the lead again after tense Mali presidential runoff
Vote counting was under way across Mali on Monday after a tense presidential runoff marked by violence, polling station closures and low turnout.
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, 73, is the clear frontrunner in a reprise of his face-off against former finance minister Soumaïla Cissé, 68.
In a reminder of the jihadist threat that was a major campaign issue, the overseer of a polling station in Arkodia, Timbuktu was shot and killed by armed Islamist militants, local officials said.
On the eve of voting, authorities said they had disrupted a plot to carry out “targeted attacks” in the capital, Bamako.
More than 100 other stations in the restive north and centre were closed due to security fears, according to local monitors Pocim (the Mali Citizen Observation Pool), which had more than 2,000 observers deployed around the country.
Turnout was just 22.38%, Pocim said. Participation in the first round was 42.7%.
The EU’s observer mission said on Monday it was able to get to the northern town of Gao, but not to Timbuktu or Kidal, also in the north, or to Mopti in the centre. But at 300 polling stations that its observers visited, “we didn’t see any major incident”, the mission’s leader, Cécile Kyenge, said.
In the first-round vote on July 29, Keïta was clearly ahead, with 42% against 18% for Cissé.
Despite fierce criticism of Keïta for his handling of the security crisis, Cissé 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.
The constitutional court rejected their petition.
Cissé’s party told AFP in the early hours of Sunday that ballot papers were already circulating, despite it being several hours before polls opened.
Voting reports, which give the number of voters and votes cast for each candidate, at at least six stations in the capital of Bamako were signed before the numbers were filled in, an AFP journalist witnessed.
Mali, a landlocked nation that is home to at least 20 ethnic groups where the majority of people live on less than $2 a day, has battled jihadist attacks and intercommunal violence for years.