11 May 2007
analysis
Nairobi — Malians were scheduled to vote in the second round of presidential elections on May 13. Now they might not, because in the first round held under two weeks ago, President Amadou Toumani Touré won by a wide margin. Now, the fact that the opposition has rejected the results and gone to court, coupled with low voter turn-out, has taken some of the sunshine off his victory, writes BANDE MOUSSA SISSOKO
The quest for the "Palais de Koulouba" once again eluded the Malian opposition, with the victory of President Amadou Toumani Touré in the first round of polls held on April 29, highlighting yet again the uphill task it has of dislodging the ruling party.
Leading opposition figures have refused to recognise Touré's victory, but with election officials declaring last week that the President Touré bagged nearly 71 per cent of the vote, the result suggested that Koulouba, the name of the hill where the Malian president lives and works, is going to be a very high climb for the opposition.
Many observers had forecast that the opposition would do much better than they eventually did. One of the advantages Touré had, as in many other African countries, was a large field of rivals who divided the vote.
Divided, the opposition lost
Voters had to choose from amongst president Touré, who is also the president of the National Assembly and leader of RPM (Gathering for the Mali); Ibrahim Bouibacar Kéïta, president of CDS (Social Democratic Convention); Mamadou Sangaré, president of PARENA (National Rebirth Party); Tiébilé Dramé, the leader of Convergence 2007; Soumeylou Boubéye Maïga, the president of SADI (African Solidarity for Democracy and Integration); Oumar Mariko; Mrs Sidibé
Aminata Diallo of the Gathering for Environmental Education and Sustainable Development; and the president of PPP (People's Party for Progress and Prosperity), Madiassa Maguiraga.
The opposition leaders clearly have very imaginative names for their parties, but they are unable to translate their imagination into a strategy to unseat the incumbent.
When the results were announced last Friday, Touré had 70.89 per cent of the vote. That left very little for his rivals to share. Kéïta thus came second with 19.08 per cent, Drame third with 3.04 per cent, then Sangaré with 1.57 per cent, and Maiga 1.46 per cent. The rest of the candidates won less than one per cent of the vote.
Mali is a relatively small country, and therefore, voter turn out is critical. However, only 36.17 per cent of the voters turned up to vote. In real terms, these were 2,490,396 voters out of the 6,884,524 registered. One reason for the low turn-out, according to analysts, was that many people took it for granted that Touré was going to win.
So lopsided was the outcome, that on May 1, the president's camp comprising the Citizen's Movement and the Alliance for Democracy and Progress (ADP) called a press conference to claim victory for Touré. They were however at pains to make the point that the defeat of the opposition had been so comprehensive that most of its leaders had lost even in their own strongholds.
The opposition figures who had to endure this humiliation were Kéïta, Dramé, Sangaré and Maïga.
If that was meant to demoralise them, then it didn't work for the next day the opposition, which had formed the Front for Democracy and the Republic (FDR) few months before the election, responded by rejecting the results.
In Bamako opposition-allied youths protested against the victory of the presidential camp. Police broke up the protests with batons, injuring several demonstrators.
The FDR also petitioned the Constitutional Court to invalidate the results of the first round of the election.
If it throws out the results, the cost will be high for Mali would be hard pressed to find the money to pay for a re-run and a final round of the polls if it comes to that.
The donors, who produced the bulk of the funds for the latest poll, would probably be disappointed as they seem to have largely accepted the verdicts of national and international observers that the elections were largely free and fair.
When the opposition takes time to study the lessons from their loss, one reason will be that they started their campaigns too late.
Strong in the big cities
Also, before the beginning of the campaigns, some of them had no political structures at all the in rural areas. They were strongly represented in big cities and towns but not in the countryside.
Opposition candidates took their time before visiting rural areas. In some of the areas, the villagers were quick to tell opposition campaigners that they didn't know its candidates.
Touré can rightly claim to have relied more than just the advantage of incumbency, to win. Over the past five years, ATT, as his supporters call him, inaugurated many health, educational and sports centres. He also built more than 1,000 "social lodgings" through the country. Toure imported thousand of tractors for farmers, and adopted a new law for the development of agriculture.
The result of this is that most young graduates and youth in general are able to find jobs.
His critics say he is just living off the fruits of initiatives started by Alpha Oumar Konaré's presidency between 199 and 2002. But even the opposition cannot deny that Touré took important steps to improve the political climate by partly giving the opposition jobs in government.
Sissoko contributes to Nation Media Group's Africa Insight from Bamako, Mali.
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