Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won Mali’s presidency after his opponent Soumaila Cisse conceded defeat late Monday. Keita had been expected to win the runoff easily, having pulled nearly 40% of the vote in the first round.
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Mali’s ex-prime minister, won the country’s presidential election Monday after his rival Soumaila Cisse conceded defeat.
The election was declared by EU and US observers to have been “credible and transparent”. The head of a European Union observer mission, Louis Michel, said, “It is an election that allows Mali now to start finishing the process that it has begun: the return to a normal democracy.”
Keita, 68, universally known by his initials IBK, will now have access to $4 billion in international development aid to rebuild the West African country after a French military intervention in January ended Islamist rebels’ occupation of the northern two-thirds of Mali.
He inherits a broken nation and must move quickly to overhaul the armed forces, tackle ingrained graft and negotiate peace with northern Tuareg fighters clamouring for more autonomy from the southern capital Bamako.
Cisse “subdued”
The concession by his rival Soumaila Cisse, who had made broad accusations of electoral fraud in the second-round vote only hours before conceding, hands Keita a strong mandate to undertake reform in the landlocked former French colony, one of the world’s poorest countries.
FRANCE 24’s Thomas Martinez in Bamako spoke to a “subdued” Cisse shortly after he conceded, and said he “made vague elusions to what he felt was electoral trickery.”
Cisse, a former finance minister, said on his official Twitter feed, “My family and I went to congratulate Mr Keita, the future president of Mali, on his victory. May God bless Mali.”
A spokesman for Cisse, who comes from northern Mali, said his candidate had admitted defeat after it became clear Keita had won even in Gao, the largest town in the north. This point was underscored by FRANCE 24’s Martinez, who said that polls had been coming in from around the country giving Keita a “commanding lead.”
Keita, who earned his reputation for firmness by crushing student protests as prime minister in the 1990s, had been widely expected to clinch Sunday’s runoff. Keita pulled in 39.34 percent of the votes in the first round of the election last month. The local broadcasters Radio Kedu and Radio Dambe both reported that, this time around, Keita again had been well ahead of Cisse – who polled 19.44 percent in the first vote.
France had pressed for the vote to go ahead quickly as it draws down its 3,000 remaining troops in Mali and hands over to a UN peacekeeping mission, despite fears a rushed process might undermine the legitimacy of a new president.
Lasting peace in North top priority
Keita has said his top priority will be to secure lasting peace for northern Mali, which has been racked by five bloody rebellions since independence from France in 1960. Light-skinned Tuaregs have accused successive black African governments in the south of marginalising the underdeveloped region.
Tuaregs took up arms again early last year, alleging Bamako had violated a 2006 peace accord meant to develop the north. Former President Amadou Toumani Toure’s failure to tackle that revolt led to the coup which tipped the country into chaos.
Keita has promised to open inclusive talks with all the peoples of northern Mali – black African, Arab and Tuareg – but many in the south are hostile to funnelling more of Mali’s scarce resources to a region they see as responsible for the country’s plight.
“There is a challenge of national reconciliation,” said Chris Fomunyoh, senior associate for Africa at the National Democratic Institute in Washington. “There is a lot of unease between ethnic groups, not just north versus south, but even within the north itself.”
The 12,600-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission being deployed will take over responsibility for security as France whittles down its contingent to just 1,000 troops – a rapid reaction force meant to tackle any outbreaks of Islamist violence.
A EU mission is also retraining and equipping Mali’s armed forces, demoralised by last year’s defeats at the hands of the Tuaregs and al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels.
MUJWA, one of three Islamist groups which seized control of northern Mali last year, had threatened to carry out attacks on polling stations in northern Mali before the July 28 first round but the electoral process passed off without any violence.
“This was an important stage in the transition in Mali towards peace and reconciliation,” U.N. Special Representative for Mali Bert Koenders said. “The lack of violence was impressive in a country which has just emerged from conflict.”
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Source: New York Times
