Bamako, Mali — Twenty-four candidates are set to contest the presidential election in Mali on Sunday, 28 April. Their campaign posters, with enticing slogans and captions, are plastered all over the capital, Bamako. In an assortment of sizes, and a riot of colours, the posters have been nailed to front doors and tree trunks, stuck up on walls and taped to campaign cars and vans.
The faces of the candidates - some smiling, others serious, a couple formal and forbidding - also feature prominently on specially printed T-shirts and fashionable cloth, worn in diverse and dramatic style by their supporters.
How to display the presidential contenders to best effect is proving almost as much a competition as the election itself. Malian women, even the most demure, are bearing the images of their favourite candidates emblazoned across their breasts and behinds, some dancing and waving mini-posters of their heroes.
Some 5.4 million voters are eligible to cast their ballot on Sunday, to choose which of the 24 potential presidents should get the top job in Mali, or at least get through the first round of the election and compete in the second.
There are three front runners in the race for the presidency.
Amadou Toumani Toure, a revered and respected former military leader is standing as an independent. He headed a coup in 1991 to topple a dictator and handed over power to civilians, after a one-year democratic transition. His supporters say "ATT" is the right man for the job. His detractors ask what a supposed man of honour is doing meddling in the messy business of politics.
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a one-time prime minister (who broke away from President Alpha Oumar Konares governing Adema party and set up his own), is considered another potential winner.
Keita has been endorsed as the candidate of the influential Islamic associations in Mali, a country that is more than 95 percent Muslim. But some Muslim groups have rebuffed the recommendation, accusing Keita of using a Congolese and provocatively sexy dance-song to liven up his campaigns. They also claim that Islam suffered most in Mali during the six years Keita served as prime minister.
Soumaila Cisse, a wealthy former finance minister of Mali, is Ademas presidential hopeful. He appears to be winning the support of the youth, although there are questions about how Cisse amassed his financial resources.
The current President, Alpha Konare, is preparing to quit power on 8 June, after serving two terms as president, the limit set by the constitution in Mali, though he flirted with the idea of a third term.
His legacy is mixed. Konare was elected to office on a tide of goodwill and enthusiasm for democracy in 1992, the year after a peoples revolution drove out the autocratic leader at the time, General Moussa Traore, widely accused of mismanaging the country.
Western governments have seen Konare a model African democrat and he has successfully exploited that international acclaim.
But at home, the realities of a country described by the United Nations as the fifth poorest in the world, have confronted Konare at every turn.
After his decade in power, poverty is still endemic and Mali is still poor. Konares two consecutive governments have certainly made improvements and can show some progress. But many claim he has not achieved what he should or could have in 10 years, and they strongly rejected talk of changing the constitution to allow Konare a third term.
Whoever is to take over from Konare will have to convince Malians that he is capable of bringing them positive change. And the candidates are certainly doing their best. Slogans such as 'A Man Of Honour', 'God, Mali, My Conscience, 'The Peoples Candidate, 'Always By Your Side and 'Rally to Build abound.
For those with the funds, no expense has been spared during campaigning which ends on Friday. The ruling Adema's candidate, Cisse, has been using a helicopter to criss-cross the vast country, which is larger than Senegal, Guinea and Cote dIvoire combined.
The minister of territorial administration, Ousmane Sy, partly responsibly for organizing the elections, held a press briefing on Thursday night and told journalists confidently that almost everything was in place for Sundays poll.
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Sy pledged that there would not be a repeat of the shambolic, disorganised elections in 1997, disputed and boycotted by most of the opposition.
He said that a computerized electoral list, available on the Internet, was complete. This, said Sy, would ensure that more than 12,000 polling stations - 11,700 within Mali and the rest outside the country to cater for the large immigrant Malian communities living in Cote dIvoire, France, Senegal, the Central African Republic and elsewhere - would be ready for business on Sunday.
"Our challenge is that every Malian will wake up on Sunday morning, will find his/her polling station, voting card and ballot paper and be able to cast their vote," he said.
Ahead of Sundays poll, one thing most Malians agree on - and there is plenty of pre-election discussion - is that although three of the candidates may be getting most of the advance media publicity, another, unfancied presidential contender could prove to be a surprise dark horse and upset the pundits' predictions.
