Ex-PM Keita to face Cisse in Mali election run-off

{{Mali’s postwar election produced no clear winner and former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will face ex-Finance Minister Soumaila Cisse in a run-off due on August 11, the government said on Friday.}}

Provisional results gave Keita 39 percent of votes cast in the July 28 poll, well ahead of Cisse’s 19 percent. But the third and fourth placed candidates may now rally behind Cisse, with whom they have been in coalition.

The election was the first since a March 2012 coup led to the occupation of Mali’s north by separatist and Islamist rebels. French forces intervened in January to defeat the al Qaeda-linked Islamists, whose threats to disrupt the poll did not materialize.

The election turnout, at 51.5 percent, was the highest ever in Mali, underscoring its people’s deep desire to turn the page on the violence and upheaval that have brought the West African nation to its knees over the last 18 months.

“The crisis is reaching an end … There will be no problem for the second round,” interim Prime Minister Django Sissoko, on a visit to neighboring Ivory Coast, said after the results were announced.

“We are confident that we can do everything to ensure a peaceful vote and a result that will be accepted first of all by the Malian people and also by the candidates,” he said.

But more than three million people did not take part and 400,000 of those who did spoiled their ballot papers, according to official figures, setting the stage for some hectic campaigning and coalition building before the second round.

“I think this is a positive thing for Malian democracy given what the country has just gone through,” said Christopher Fomunyoh, a senior associate with the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, which works to strengthen democracy around the world.

“Firstly it allows whoever wins the second round to have a full mandate, legitimacy that is required to govern. Secondly it is going to allow the election management body… to address some of the shortcomings that were identified in the first round,” he added.

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