Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has claimed victory in Sunday’s Presidential run-off election.
His camp claims he won the runoff “comfortably” per provisional vote counts.
Keita’s spokesman Bocary Treta told reporters on Tuesday that the President is on course to retain power.
But the opposition says it will reject the election results. Opposition leader, Soumaïla Cissé who faced Keita in the run-off made the declaration on Monday in Bamako.
He said “We will no longer accept results that have been fiddled with. We will no longer accept lies.”
Cisse further said that “We will no longer accept tampering, we will no longer accept buying of conscience.”
“We say no to the dictatorship of fraud, Mali will not be built on fraud. We will not accept that a Malian president be elected by fraud.”
Sunday’s run-off poll was characterized by low turnout across the country.
Voting in parts of the country was hit by militant attacks creating high level of insecurity.
President Keita, 73 and former finance minister Cisse, 68 were the only contenders.
Both candidates failed to obtain more than 50 percent of votes in the first round of voting last month.
Keita won the first round of voting by 41.4 percent with Cisse coming second with 17.8 percent of votes.
In 2013 president Keita, beat Soumaila Cisse in a second round of voting. He won then by 77% although the opposition disputed the outcome.
Cissse failed to secure the support or endorsement of other opposition parties. That could impact on his chances of winning the run-off.
Mali has experienced a lot of jihadist violence and ethnic attacks over the years with little progress in stopping them.
