BAMAKO: Malian former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita holds a comfortable lead and could win an outright first-round victory in the country’s presidential election, the minister of territorial administration said yesterday.
The announcement of partial results will likely fuel tensions between Keita’s supporters and his rivals. Voters turned out in large numbers on Sunday, eager for a fresh start after a March 2012 coup allowed separatist and Al Qaeda-linked rebels to seize the desert north last year. It took an offensive by thousands of French troops in January to scatter them into the desert and mountains.
Voting was peaceful and observers have largely praised the polls.
“There is one candidate, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who has a wide margin compared with the other candidates,” Colonel Moussa Sinko Coulibaly said in Bamako. REUTERS
