Mali’s president wins second term in country plagued by violence

Mali’s president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, has won a second term after taking 67% of the vote in a runoff election.

Opposition leader Soumaïla Cissé received more than 32% of the vote in Sunday’s poll.

The estimated turnout was 34%. Voters were put off by threats of violence from extremist groups, and there was widespread disillusion with veteran politicians, whose campaign promises failed to offer convincing solutions to the impoverished and violent west African country’s many problems.

The election looks unlikely to bring stability, which is key in the battle against Islamist extremism in the Sahel region and in efforts to curb illegal migration to Europe.

Cissé, 68, has said he will reject the results of the runoff, which was marred by allegations of ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities, calling on the population “to rise up”.

Extra security forces were deployed after about 250,000 people, 3% of the electorate, were unable to vote in the first round because of insecurity.

On Sunday nearly 500 polling stations were unable to open, the government said, mostly in regions plagued by jihadi violence and ethnic tensions. In a preliminary report published on Monday, African Union election observers said voting was carried out “in acceptable conditions”. The European Union said no “major incident” had occurred in the 300 polling stations its observers visited.

French, US and UN troops have been fighting militants in Mail since 2012, when ethnic and Islamist groups seized swaths of territory and the city of Timbuktu.

Government authority is still weak in many places and observers say militants, some linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State, have regrouped since French troops intervened in 2013 to push them back. They have been expanding their influence across Mali’s desert north and into the fertile centre.

The civil society website Malilink recorded 932 attacks in the first half of 2018, almost double the figure for all of 2017 and triple that for 2015.

Jihadists have worked to stoke intercommunal conflict. Killings along ethnic lines have claimed hundreds of civilian lives this year, including at least 11 last week in the Mopti region.

Cissé blames Keïta, 73, for the worsening violence and has accused his government of rampant corruption. But the former finance minister failed to unite the opposition behind him, and first-round challengers backed the president or refused to tell supporters which way to vote.

Few Malians attended marches and protests in the capital, Bamako, that had been called for by opposition leaders ahead of the runoff vote.

Neither candidate offered detailed policies, relying instead on vague promises to combat Mali’s multiple challenges. Keïta, who was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, and Cissé, a software engineer and economist, are part of a well-entrenched political establishment.

They are from the same generation of leaders, and served in government together in the 1990s. Both have been accused of corruption. Keïta has a patchy record, with poverty growing despite 5% annual growth. But Cissé’s promise to “speak to the people of Mali” did not win mass support.