BAMAKO: Campaigning for Mali’s watershed July 28 presidential election officially began yesterday, with the nation struggling to move on from war and return to desperately needed constitutional order after an 18-month political crisis.
The ballot will be the first since a coup in March last year that ousted the democratically elected president, just months before he was due to step down at the end of his final term in office.
The transitional government lifted a nearly six-month state of emergency on Saturday, marking what officials hope will be a gradual return to normality ahead of the nationwide polls. But critics of the process argue that it is being rushed and, far from restoring democracy, it threatens to plunge the deeply divided west African nation further into chaos.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the preparations last week as an “enormous undertaking”.
“The situation in Mali is of great concern... It is vital that these elections be credible and peaceful, with an outcome accepted by all Malians,” Ban told reporters in Geneva. The coup toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure and created an opening that allowed groups allied to Al Qaeda to seize northern Mali.
AFP
