Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s spokesman said on Monday that the president was substantially ahead according to the provisional vote count after Sunday’s election, although a run-off was also possible.
“According to our tally, IBK has come substantially ahead,”his spokesman Mahamadou Camara told Reuters by telephone, using the popular nickname for the president taken from his initials.
Meanwhile, the opposition party of Mali presidential election candidate Soumaila Cisse said on Monday that the poll would go to a run-off between Cisse and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, based on a count done by its own party agents.
“We are going to a second round between Soumaila Cisse and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita,” Cisse’s campaign manager Tiebele Drame told a press conference at the party’s headquarters in the capital Bamako.
The Ministry of Territorial Administration said attacks by gunmen and other violence had disrupted around a fifth of Mali’s polling stations, with about three percent unable to function at all.
Spiralling jihadist violence has become a key issue in the campaign of several opposition candidates competing with Keita as attacks multiply and the death toll mounts across north and central Mali.
“The law forbids the proclamation of results by anyone except the Ministry of Territorial Administration,” Cisse’s campaign manager Drame told a news conference.
“However, I can tell you that we are going to a second round between Soumaila Cisse and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.”
Of the roughly 23,000 polling stations that were meant to open, 4,632 were disrupted by “armed attacks or other violence”, of which 644 were unable to operate, ministry figures showed.
In most of Mali, the vote was peaceful and relatively well-organised, with polls opening and closing on time. Most people who were enrolled and turned up were able to vote.
But the number of disenfranchised voters, even if small,could become a flashpoint if the result is very close. Counting is under way but official results may not come out for another day or even longer.
