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Mali Presidential election run-off: Vote counting begins, Keita remains favorite candidate coming into polls
Twenty-two of the 25 losing first-round candidates have thrown their weight Keita, also known as IBK, who earned a reputation for firmness by crushing student protests and strikes in the 1990s.
Cisse, a former finance minister and vocal critic of the military junta that seized power last year, took 19 percent of the first-round vote with pledges to improve education, create jobs and reform the army.
“I’m proud of our people who have, in such a short time, put us on a path back to the republic and to democracy,” he said.
Voting took place at some 21,000 polling stations across the landlocked nation, from the forested south, home to 90 percent of Mali’s 16 million people, to the northern cities of Timbuktu and Gao, where the al-Qaeda-linked Islamists had imposed sharia law.
A record 49 percent of 6.8 million registered voters turned out to cast their ballots in the first round of the election last month. Observers told reportters that participation appeared to be slightly lower for the runoff, but the vote had been peaceful and free of major technical problems.
“Overall, everything very went well. There was nothing dubious,” Louis Michel, the head of the European Union’s observer mission, told journalists after polls closed at 6 pm (1400 EDT).
“Whoever wins will have been elected in total legitimacy,” he said, as poll workers began counting ballots by candlelight in a classroom of the Djikoroni Para primary school in Bamako. Final results are expected in two or three days, and the constitutional court has until Friday to certify them.
