Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has been declared winner of Sunday’s presidential run-off.
He won the heavily disputed run-off election with 67.17% of the votes. His opponent, the opposition candidate Soumaila Cisse, won 32.83% of the votes.
Official results from the Ministry of Territorial Administration on Thursday showed that Keita is set for a second term. The opposition says it is rejecting the election results.
Soumaïla Cissé who faced Keita in the run-off said on Monday in Bamako that “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.
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.
Mali has experienced a lot of jihadist violence and ethnic attacks over the years with little progress in stopping them.
Source: Africafeeds.com
