{{Mali’s presidential front-runner has ended his campaign promising to restore peace to the West African country reeling from a coup and an uprising that led to French military intervention.}}<\/p>\n
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 68, a former prime minister with a reputation for toughness, won last month’s first-round ballot with nearly 40 percent of the vote but fell short of an outright majority to avert a second round.<\/p>\n
He faces Soumaila Cisse, former finance minister, in Sunday’s run-off.<\/p>\n
The first round attracted 27 candidates and Keita, popularly known as IBK, has secured the endorsement of 22 of the 25 losing candidates.<\/p>\n
Cisse, 63, the head of the West African monetary union (UEMOA), took just 19 percent of the first-round vote with promises to improve education, create jobs and reform the army.<\/p>\n
Once seen as a model for democracy in turbulent West Africa, Mali was rocked by violence last year when al-Qaeda-linked rebels capitalised on the coup to seize control of the vast desert north, where they imposed a harsh version of Islamic law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Mali’s presidential front-runner has ended his campaign promising to restore peace to the West African country reeling from a coup and an uprising that led to French military intervention.}} Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 68, a former prime minister with a reputation for toughness, won last month’s first-round ballot with nearly 40 percent of the vote but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}