A spokesperson for Mali’s President, Amadou Toumani Touré, on Monday claimed the incumbent leader had a second five-year term in a weekend election, but the opposition countered by crying foul.
”The curve is very clearly in favour of our candidate … who is largely ahead, according to the first results sent to us by our representatives at the counting centres,” Hassan Barry said.
Said Barry: ”In view of these results, he will be elected in the first round with an overwhelming score.”
If confirmed, that would mean Touré won an outright majority in Sunday’s election, which would automatically make the president the winner without the need for a knockout second round of voting.
But the main opposition candidate, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of the Front for Democracy and the Republic, complained of massive fraud.
”Voting was characterised by massive fraud, intimidation and blackmail by an electoral machinery and an instrumentalised administration with orders from candidate [Touré],” said Keita’s spokesperson, Macky Diallo.
Keita is a former prime minister and head of the National Assembly who came third in the 2002 polls.
A former Cabinet minister and now opposition politician, Tiebile Drame of the Party for National Revival, has also claimed ”widespread fraud” in the polls, but gave no details.
Observers from the Economic Community of West African States said they believe Sunday’s polling was overall ”free, fair and credible”, despite ”some insufficiencies noted here and there”, according to the head of the mission, former Togolese prime minister Koffi Sama.
He said a few instances of multiple voting and fraudulent voter identities had been detected, and minors were acting as electoral agents, but it ”marginally affected the efficiency and quality of the voting process”.
About 1 000 observers were posted across the 1,2-million-square-kilometre country in the heart of West Africa.
First official results were expected on Monday, with full results ready around Wednesday or Thursday.
A source in the Registrar General’s office, which organises the elections, also suggested Touré’s was on his way to victory, saying ”it would appear that the outgoing president is largely ahead”.
Eight candidates vied for the top job in one of Africa’s largest but most impoverished countries, which has nonetheless been praised for having made significant democratic strides in the past 15 years.
Touré is a former general who ousted dictator Moussa Traore in 1991 and installed a multiparty system before stepping aside in 1992. Ten years later he returned to the political scene, stood for presidential elections and won easily.
The 58-year-old does not have a political party, but enjoys the backing of two large coalitions and myriad small parties, including the Tuareg ex-rebels who once waged a separatist war in the northeast.
Overall voter turnout was low, with the national independent electoral commission estimating that it hovered at about 38% of the potential 6,8-million voters — similar to the level recorded in 2002 elections.
Despite being the third-largest gold producer in Africa after South Africa and Ghana, the former French colony is the world’s third-poorest country, according to the United Nations. — Sapa-AFP