{"id":11434,"date":"2018-08-14T02:25:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T02:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11434"},"modified":"2018-08-14T02:25:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T02:25:21","slug":"mali-soumaila-cisse-rejects-results-as-ballot-counting-under-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11434","title":{"rendered":"Mali: Soumaila Cisse rejects results as ballot counting under way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Opposition leader\u00a0Soumaila Cisse<\/a> says he will reject the results of Mali’s presidential runoff vote, urging people in the country “to rise up”.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s poll, which was marked by a low turnout amid security concerns and voter apathy, pitted Cisse against incumbent President\u00a0<\/span>Ibrahim Boubacar Keita<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ballot counting was underway on Monday across the country, with\u00a0official second-round results expected for a few days.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The fraud is proven; this is why there are results we will not accept,” Cisse told reporters on Monday at his party’s headquarters in the capital, Bamako.<\/p>\n

“I call on all Malians to rise up … We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cisse had accused the government camp of cheating in the first round, which saw him securing 18 percent of the vote against Keita’s 41 percent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“We have a large lead. We do not accept that our voice is stolen,” Cisse, who heads the Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) party, added on Monday.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mali: Candidates claim election rigging<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

“This fight is in your hands, dear supporters… Let’s get engaged to save Mali<\/a>.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Cisse’s party told AFP in the early hours of Sunday that ballot papers were already circulating, several hours before polls opened.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In at least six stations in the capital of Bamako, voting reports – which give the number of voters and votes cast for each candidate – were signed before the numbers were filled in, an AFP journalist witnessed.<\/p>\n

But Mohamed Dileita, head of an observation mission from the Paris-based OIF, a federation of French-speaking nations, said that “everyone has more or less accepted the verdict … the vote took place.”<\/p>\n

“At the time I speak, at least, it is a calm election, credible. At the moment we do not see any reason why it changes,” Dileita told Radio France Internationale.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three main opposition candidates had mounted a last-ditch legal challenge to the first-round result, alleging ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities, but their petition was rejected by the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n

Low turnout<\/span><\/h2>\n

But the elections were also marked by voters staying away from the polls.<\/p>\n

Threats by armed fighters forced nearly 500 polling stations – about two percent of the total – to stay closed during Sunday’s run-off, the government said. One election official was killed in northern Niafunke, in Timbuktu region.<\/p>\n

Most of the shuttered polling stations were in the Timbuktu region and the conflict-hit central region of Mopti, Security Minister Salif Traore told reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thousands of troops had been deployed across Mali to protect voters after widespread violence in the first round.<\/span><\/p>\n

Security fears severely dampened the turnout, which a civil society group, the Mali Citizen Observation Pool (POCIM), estimated at just over 27 percent of the eight million registerd voters. Turnout is usually about 40 percent in Malian elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Mali votes in presidential polls dominated by security concerns<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

“Voters did not mobilise much to fulfill their civic duty,” POCIM said in its report.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The reasons given relate to the security problem and the lack of enthusiasm following the publication of the results of the first round.”<\/span><\/p>\n

It reported isolated incidents of ballot stealing and attacks on polling stations, including two which were torched.<\/span><\/p>\n

A report by an EU<\/a> observer mission will be important for the credibility of the election, though it was not clear on Monday when it would be published.<\/p>\n

On Sunday the EU mission said the voting had passed peacefully for the most part, although it had no monitors in Mopti, Kidal and Timbuktu regions due to the security threat.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mali, a landlocked nation home to at least 20 ethnic groups where the majority of people live on less than $2 a day, has battled attacks by armed groups and intercommunal violence for years.<\/p>\n

Peace agreements signed in 2015 by the government and rebel coalitions raised hopes of stability, but their meaningful implementation has been challenging.<\/p>\n

As a result, the security situation remains fragile in the face of continued violent attacks, mainly in the country’s north and central regions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opposition leader\u00a0Soumaila Cisse says he will reject the results of Mali’s presidential runoff vote, urging people in the country “to rise up”. Sunday’s poll, which was marked by a low turnout amid security concerns and voter apathy, pitted Cisse against incumbent President\u00a0Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Ballot counting was underway on Monday across the country, with\u00a0official second-round…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}