The electoral authority in West Africa’s troubled nation of Mali has announced that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won his bid for re-election for a five-year term in a runoff ballot. Mr. Keita picked 67.17 percent of the vote against 32.83 for the opposition challenger and former Finance Minister, Soumaila Cisse, who also ran against President Keita in 2013.
Apart from being a landlocked nation, Mali has been battling years of fierce Islamic revolt that has now fuelled inter-communal violence in a polity where most people live in abject poverty.
President Keita made the nation’s ugly security crisis one of his big campaign issues, with opposition candidates blaming him for the country’s ills as well as describing him as incompetent and totally indifferent.
But the verbal assaults did not do much to deny the incumbent the votes he needed to turn back the factions that formed his opposition. Besides, the poor election turn-out and widespread voter apathy worked to his advantage in the run-off poll.
Independent monitors said last Sunday’s voting was also marred by jihadist attacks that forced the closure of a small percentage of polling stations, and by allegations of ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities.
The three main opposition candidates mounted a legal challenge to the result of the first-round of voting, but their bid was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
