Mali candidates allege poll fraud ahead of results

Fifteen Malian opposition candidates on Wednesday piled pressure on the government to probe what they said was fraud in Sunday’s presidential election.

No election results have been published yet by Mali’s Ministry of Territorial Administration, the only body that can legally do so. But two rivals of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita already claim to have made it into a second round.

‘‘Since the vote couldn’t happen in a certain number of areas, with the number of voters and of cities affected remaining unknown, we urge for an evaluation of the implementation of the measures that had been announced during the meeting between the candidates and the Prime Minister July 28; the publication of all results, for every single voting station; we ask for the publication of the number of proxy votes used in each voting station; we ask for the Constitutional Court to publicly deny the serious accusations that were made against it and the opening of a judicial investigation’‘, said Modibo Kone who spoke on behalf of eighteen candidates.

Soumaila Cisse, seen as the strongest challenger, and Aliou Diallo both say they have enough votes to face Keita in round two. Only two candidates can make it to the second round.

A statement from nineteen candidates from which one later dissociated himself complained of a huge number of electoral cards being picked up the wrong people, open vote buying, ballot box stuffing, fraudulent use of voter cards that were never picked up and unfair use of state media for Keita’s campaign.

During a news conference on Wednesday, the coalition of candidates urged the government to detail the number of voters who couldn’t vote, as well as the exact locations where the vote could not happen.

They also asked the authorities to publish the results for every single polling station, and the number of proxy votes used in every of them.

Mali’s Sunday election was beset by armed attacks and problems with the distribution of voting cards.

Reuters