Washington, DC — Mali's Constitutional Court says over half a million votes cast in Mali's presidential election 11 days ago must be cancelled due to irregularities but that the results of the poll, provisionally announced by the ministry of territorial administration last Friday, remain unchanged.
Those results had already given first and second place respectively to former military leader Amadou Toumani Toure (affectionately known as ATT and standing as an independent) and the governing Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adema) party's Soumaila Cisse. The two men now go forward to compete in a second round run-off on Sunday.
The decision means that Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, or "IBK", who was lying in third place and had alleged gross rigging of the poll, is out of the race.
The Court's revised results put ATT in the lead with 28.70 per cent, Cisse second with 21.30%, 1.5 percentage points less than in the provisional results, and IBK third with 21.03% - just 4,000 votes behind Cisse.
Some 2.2m votes were cast in the election but the court's decision means that almost a quarter of them - 541,000 - are invalid.
Before the announcement, jittery Malians had been waiting for eleven days since the polls to elect a new president.
Indications were that the court was doing its own rigorous independent count, after several political parties filed complaints of vote rigging and fraud as well as irregularities in vote processing and counting after the disputed first round presidential poll on 28 April.
Security was tight around the court premises in downtown Bamako, with dozens of heavily-armed republican guards denying entry to all visitors, including election observers, diplomats and journalists.
Reporters have witnessed mini vans, loaded with boxes of files driving in and out of the compound.
The candidate who placed third, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, and his Rally for Mali party have called for the results to be annulled. Keita, known by his initials IBK, maintains he won the first round and has alleged 'massive and grotesque' fraud to prevent him from going through to the second round.
IBK's claim is backed by the presidential candidates of a coalition of five parties, known as Hope 2002. They also petitioned the Constitutional Court to annul the results.
The National Independent Electoral Commission and international observers also expressed concern about the counting process.
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The secretary-general of the court, Boubacar Tawati, told journalists that more than 150 officials, on 60 computers, had been working round the clock since Sunday, to wade through almost 30 complaints they had received. The Constitutional Court is the sole body mandated to declare the definitive election results.
Tawati confirmed that judges were conducting their own recount, using original ballot tally sheets sent in sealed envelopes directly to the court, from the 12,004 polling stations in and outside Mali.
Despite the current controversy, ATT and Cisse have been busy campaigning for the second round presidential poll on Sunday.
ATT, who led Mali during a one-year transition from single-party autocratic rule to democratic elections in 1992, was reported to have made a lightning trip to the Gabonese capital, Libreville and onto Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. Mali's southern neighbour is home to the largest expatriate Malian community of more than 300,000.
Cisse continued his campaign within Mali, using his now trademark helicopter which has caught the imagination of the nation. Several failed presidential candidates called on their supporters to back Cisse in the run-off.
Although Cisse is the official candidate of President Alpha Oumar Konare's governing ADEMA party, observers say the outgoing Malian leader in fact supports ATT.
After ten years in office, Konare is stepping down as president, after serving a two-term limit set by the constitution of Mali.
