The Sunday, August 11, 2013 second round election held peacefully, drawing a huge turnout.
Following the inconclusive first round of Mali’s presidential election on July 28, 2013, close to seven million voters returned to the polls yesterday, August 11, 2013 to choose between former Prime Minister, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and ex-Finance Minister, Soumaïla Cissé. The Ministry of Territorial Administration said final results could be ready five days after the vote.
As voting went underway, the general opinion was that Keita, popularly referred to as IBK, was the favourite to win the election many Malians hope will restore stability in a country torn apart by last year's coup and Islamist insurgency, Reuters news agency reported. He took a strong lead in the first round with 39.79 per cent of votes as against 19.70 per cent for Soumaïla Cissé, the runner-up.
Twenty-two of the 25 losing first-round candidates threw their weight behind Keita, 68, a former PM in the 1990s who says his priority will be to restore State authority and reconcile the country. Cissé, 63, a technocrat who headed the West African Monetary Union, has pledged to improve education, create jobs and reform the army. Voting took place in over 21,000 polling stations at home and abroad where refugees from the war and other residents participated. Braving a heavy downpour, dozens of voters lined up in front of the Mamadou Guindo School in the Badalabougou District of the capital, Bamako, to wait for polling to open at 8 am local time.
The election follows more than a year of turmoil which included a coup and a French-led military intervention to oust Islamist rebels from the north. According to Chris Fomunyoh, a Senior Associate for Africa at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, personality differences between the two candidates are so great that whoever loses will create a real opposition.
However the challenges for the new President are daunting: restoring peace and stability, consolidating democracy, revamping the economy and ensuring national reconciliation. Others are reconstruction, enabling internally-displaced people and refugees to return home, military reforms and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants or surrendering rebels.
