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Mali counts votes after poll worker slain
BAMAKO, Aug 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Vote counting was under way across Mali on
Monday after a tense presidential runoff in which a poll worker was killed
and 100 polling stations were forced to close due to the security threat from
Islamist militants.
Security had been drastically boosted ahead of the election’s second round
between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and former finance minister Soumaila
Cisse.
But over 100 stations had to be closed in the restive central and northern
regions, according to local observer group POCIM.
“Jihadists came this Sunday around 13:30 (1330 GMT) to a polling station in
Arkodia,” in the northern Timbuktu region, a local official told AFP.
“They asked everyone to put their hands up. The polling station president
tried to escape. The jihadists shot and killed him,” the source said.
The first round vote on July 29 was marred by violence and threats from
armed groups that led to several hundred polling stations being closed — but
no casualties had been reported.
Authorities in the vast West African nation said Saturday they had
disrupted a plot to carry out “targeted attacks” in the capital Bamako on the
eve of the vote.
Sunday’s ballot in Mali is a rerun of a 2013 faceoff between Keita, 73, and
Cisse, 68, amid a wave of jihadist bloodshed and ethnic violence.
This year’s campaign saw fierce attacks on Keita’s perceived failure to
halt the violence, as well as mounting accusations of vote fraud.
But public enthusiasm has been low and the opposition is fractured.
“We hope the new president does better and knows how to make up for past
mistakes,” voter El Hajd Aliou Sow, a retired civil servant, told AFP.
Mali, a landlocked nation 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.
After the first-round vote the pool of candidates was reduced from 24 to
two, as Keita was credited with 42 percent of the vote and Cisse picked up 18
percent.
– Fraud claims –
Keita cast his vote in Bamako shortly after 0900 GMT Sunday and warned
against “staged” electoral fraud after accusations of ballot box stuffing and
other irregularities.
“How could you stage fraud when you are assured of the support of your
people?” Keita said.
Cisse’s party told AFP in the early hours of Sunday that ballot papers were
already circulating, several hours before polls opened.
MORE/MSY/0935 hrs
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In at least five stations in the capital of Bamako, voting reports — which
give the number of voters and votes cast for each candidate — were signed
before the numbers were filled in, an AFP journalist witnessed.
“It is like signing a blank cheque,” a source close to the organisation of
the poll said. “You can imagine what happens in the rest of the country.”
The three main opposition candidates had mounted a last-ditch legal
challenge to the first-round result, alleging ballot-box stuffing and other
irregularities. But their petition was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
Cisse has failed to unite the opposition behind him, and first-round
challengers have either backed the president or refused to give voting
instructions.
Local observers said voter turnout was low amid heavy rains in several
regions, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) said in a
statement.
– Polling stations closed –
Results are expected within five days. Turnout was low in the first round
at around 40 percent.
Security had been tightened for the second round, an aide in the prime
minister’s office said, with 20 percent more soldiers on duty.
But voting could not take place in several areas, including the northern
village of Kiname, 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Timbuktu, where “armed men
came and took all the voting material to the river bank and set it on fire,”
a resident told AFP.
“There was no voting in Toguerekotia in the Sossobe district (of the
central Mopti region) because of insecurity,” WANEP, which has 150 observers
across the country, said in a statement.
Outside Mali, the hope is that the winner of the election will strengthen a
2015 accord that the fragile Sahel state sees as its foundation for peace.
The deal brought together the government, government-allied groups and
former Tuareg rebels.
But a state of emergency heads into its fourth year in November.
Jihadist violence has spread from the north to the centre and south of the
vast country and spilled into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, often
inflaming communal conflicts.
France still has 4,500 troops deployed alongside the UN’s 15,000
peacekeepers and a regional G5 Sahel force, aimed at rooting out jihadists
and restoring the authority of the state.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0935 hrs