Politics

Mali opposition leader rejects election result as counting underway

Published

6 years ago

August 14, 2018

Malian opposition candidate Soumaila Cisse said on Monday he would reject the results of a presidential runoff marred by accusations of fraud, violence and low turnout, calling on the population “to rise up.”

Ballot counting was underway on Monday across the vast West African country after the vote Sunday saw one poll worker killed and hundreds of stations closed due to insecurity.

“The fraud is proven, this is why there are results we will not accept,” Cisse said at his party’s headquarters in Bamako.

“I call on all Malians to rise up… We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud,” he added.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, is the clear frontrunner in a reprise of his 2013 faceoff against former finance minister Cisse, 68.

But Cisse’s team and other opposition contenders have repeatedly accused the government of fraud, including ballot-box stuffing and vote buying.

However the African Union (AU) election observers said the voting was carried out “in acceptable conditions,” in a preliminary report published Monday.

At this stage there is “no tangible element” pointing towards voting irregulariities, the observers said, congratulating the Mali government for its efforts to improve the voting process and noting a drop in the number of untoward incidents in the second round of voting.

The European Union also said that in the 300 polling stations its observers visited, no “major incident” occurred.

Nearly 500 polling stations were unable to open on Sunday, the government said, mostly in regions plagued by jihadist violence and ethnic tensions.

“We had a little over 3.7 percent of stations which had not functioned properly” during the first round on July 29, Salif Traore, Mali’s security minister, said on Monday.

In the first-round vote on July 29, Keita was clearly ahead, with 42 percent against 18 percent for Cisse.

The three main opposition candidates had mounted a last-ditch legal challenge to the first-round result, alleging ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities.

But their petition was rejected by the Constitutional Court.

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Politics

Mali: 7 Russian mercenaries killed

Published

4 hours ago

November 24, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

An al Qaeda offshoot in North Africa has claimed responsibility for the attack in central Mali, killing at least seven mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner private military contractor company.

Wagner earlier lost a battle in July with mostly Tuareg rebels and Islamists close to Mali’s Algerian border, exposing the perils faced by mercenaries used by military juntas in the Sahel area of West Africa.

The separatists and strong branches of Al Qaeda and Islamic State, which have taken over large areas of the Sahel over the past 12 years, are difficult for Mali and its neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger to control.

The al Qaeda offshoot JNIM claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack, according to a statement from SITE Intelligence Group, which keeps an eye on extremist activity in the area. According to SITE, JNIM captured several weapons and killed seven Russian Wagner mercenaries.

Following an attack, the bodies of at least five white males wearing army fatigues were seen laying near a military truck in a video obtained by Reuters. The validity of the footage could not be confirmed by Reuters.

SITE Intelligence posted images allegedly from JNIM that showed many crates of weapons and ammo together with the dead and bloodied bodies of troops.

Although two local officials acknowledged the incident, a Malian army source claimed to have seen seven dead bodies, including Russian fighters. Five Wagner warriors were slain, according to one of them.

At least six Russians have been murdered in the attack, which was carried out by Katiba Macina, a division of JNIM, according to a consultant working on security in the area.

The expert referred to the Russians as Africa Corps warriors, a paramilitary group under Kremlin leadership that has taken Wagner’s position in Africa throughout the previous 12 months.

Mali has previously said that Russian servicemen trainers are assisting local troops with Russian-purchased weaponry rather than mercenaries.

Politics

Mauritius’ Prime Minister to double as Finance Minister

Published

2 days ago

November 23, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

In an effort to maintain a tight eye on the economy, Mauritius’ Prime Minister, Navin Ramgoolam, who took office this month following a resounding election victory, said on Friday that he would retain the position of finance minister for himself.

“We are doing an audit of the economy to see to what extent the outgoing government has destroyed it,” Ramgoolam told reporters in the capital Port Louis after he presided over the swearing-in of other ministers.

Ten years after he stepped down as prime minister, the seasoned politician returned to the position when his Alliance du Changement (ADC) alliance won 60 of the 62 seats in the national legislature.

The 77-year-old Ramgoolam said earlier this week that he would be auditing governmental finances. Before this, he was prime minister from 1995 to 2000 and again from 2005 to 2014.

Ramgoolam started a campaign in 2006 to streamline taxes and reduce bureaucracy to diversify the $10 billion economy beyond exports of sugar, textiles, and tourism.

Since then, the 1.3 million-person nation, which positions itself as a bridge between Africa and Asia, has developed into a major offshore financial hub and has been rated by the World Bank as the easiest location to do business in Africa regularly.