BAMAKO: The campaign for Mali’s presidential election wrapped up yesterday, two days ahead of a vote seen as vital for a return to peace in a country traumatised by political chaos and war.
Voters will have a choice of 27 candidates as they go to the polls tomorrow for the first time since a separatist uprising led to a coup and then a sweeping Islamist offensive last year which upended one of the region’s most stable democracies. The transitional government yesterday declared a public holiday to allow as many Malians as possible to collect their voter cards, with the latest official figures showing 85 percent had been distributed to the electorate of almost seven million.
The three-week campaign has played out without major incident, although renewed violence in the north last week cast doubt over Mali’s readiness to deliver a safe election and a result that would be accepted by its disparate population. Louis Michel, the head of the European Union observation mission, said conditions had been met for a credible first round, which will be followed by a run-off on August 11 if no majority winner emerges tomorrow.
“I believe that these elections can take place in a context and in conditions that are acceptable and do not allow for a distortion or an abuse of the result,” he told reporters in the capital Bamako.
“I really think the personality who emerges during this election will have more than enough legitimacy.”
One hundred EU observers will visit five of the eight administrative regions of Mali on Sunday but will not go to the restive northern provinces of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, where tensions remain following a nine-month occupation by armed Islamists last year. AFP
