Bamako, Mali — As they prepare to go to the polls on Sunday, the people of Mali have to choose a new president who could be a former military head of state, a wealthy former government minister, a former student leader or a human rights lawyer.
Or they could even vote for the countrys most popular comedian, whose slogan says he will make the people laugh, while the politicians make them cry.
Habib Dembele, 41, known to everyone as 'Guimba (the hypocrite, one of the roles he played) may have been clowning about in the past, but now says he is very serious about becoming the president of Mali which, he adds, is no joking matter.
'Guimba will find out on Sunday whether he has even the slightest chance of success running for president out of a field of a record 24 candidates in Mali.
After a busy last day of campaigning by 'Guimba and the other presidential candidates on Friday, with much singing, dancing, chanting and fanfare, the capital Bamako seemed comparatively subdued on Saturday, on the eve of the presidential election.
The citys streets were full and the markets busy, but the riotously ebullient and festive atmosphere among rival supporters that characterized the final rallies of some of the presidential candidates on Friday had evaporated.
Talk of the election was still in the air, with prospective voters discussing the merits and failings of one or other presidential hopeful.
The election campaign has been lively, but peaceful, culminating in a series of huge popular gatherings all over Bamako on Friday.
The 2002 presidential poll in Mali is the most expensive the country has seen since the 1991 popular revolution ousted the regime of President Moussa Traore, an army general. Officials had budgeted for 15 candidates, but found they had to cater for 24, costing the organizers about $300,000 per contender.
That, they say - while acknowledging the logistical nightmare of organizing the poll in such a vast and poor country - is the cost of democracy.
Each candidate had to pay a $7,000 deposit, which led to the disqualification of the only woman hoping to stand for president, Hawa Sanogo Sidibe. She failed to come up with the required sum before the deadline.
On Saturday, Sidibe told allAfrica.com she blamed her husband for the hitch, saying he had promised to pay the money and she now felt betrayed by her spouse. "Ive also been tricked by the political establishment," she said of her elimination from the presidential election contest.
Some 5.7 million Malians are eligible to vote in Sundays poll, which will be held in and outside the country, where large expatriate communities live.
There are more than 12 thousand polling stations for the electorate, including 463 mobile ballot booths, which have been made available for nomadic voters in Mali, half of whose territory is made up of the Sahara desert. The makeshift polling stations will be loaded onto camels or sturdy four-wheel vehicles.
Government officials organizing the election reported that only half the voting cards in Bamako had been picked up by the end of the week, adding that the figure was much higher, between 80-90 percent, elsewhere in the country. Voters have access to their cards on election day.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, CENI, which will supervise the ballot, said 1,004 observers were on hand to scrutinize the poll in Mali, 105 of them from abroad.
Already two cases of potential electoral fraud have been reported and one person detained, after almost 6,000 voting cards disappeared in Bamako. The minister for territorial administration, Ousmane Sy, reported earlier that police had arrested a soldier in connection with a similar case of 1,000 missing voting cards.
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The electoral commission announced that the numbers of the stolen cards would be posted at polling stations to stop their fraudulent use.
Sy told reporters on Thursday that he believed this poll would redress the problems and divisions associated with the 1997 ballot in Mali. Then, the constitutional court annulled the legislative elections because of irregularities and poor organization.
The opposition subsequently boycotted the repeat poll and the presidential election, contesting the electoral list and the distribution of voting cards. Despite the opposition's boycott, the outgoing president Alpha Oumar Konare was voted in for a second five year term.
Polling stations open at 08h00 local time (and GMT), and should close at 18h00 on Sunday.
