Mali Holds Elections After Year of Turmoil

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/africa/mali-holds-elections-after-year-of-turmoil.html

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Under pressure from France and other Western powers, Mali held a presidential election on Sunday that some observers said the country was not ready for and that risked excluding thousands of its citizens.

Voting went off peacefully, nonetheless, in an election that Mali’s numerous donors deemed crucial to restoring the country’s stability after more than a year of turmoil: an Islamist takeover in the desert north in the spring of 2012; a military coup in the capital; French military intervention to forestall Islamist advances in January; and the flight of nearly 200,000 inhabitants beyond Mali’s borders.

Mali, a poor West African desert nation, has been ruled by a makeshift, unelected government since March 2012, with no parliament, few functioning state institutions and a weak, military junta-approved president. Billions of dollars in aid have been promised by international donors but only if the country has at least the appearance of democracy. That meant proceeding to a hasty election that some of the country’s politicians, research institutes like International Crisis Group, and even the country’s electoral commission warned might be premature.

Still, all over Bamako, the capital, on Sunday, long, orderly lines formed, and citizens dipped their fingers in dye to show that they had voted. Many suggested that, however imperfect, the election would put an end to months of uncertainty.

“Life has been hard this year,” said Djibril Doumbia, a shop owner voting in the Lafiabougou neighborhood. “It’s time to vote. We need a president who can get us out of this crisis.”

Better to plunge ahead, one of the leading candidates suggested in an interview, than to wait for perfect conditions. “Is a country ready for elections when 80 percent of the population can’t read my platform?” asked Soumaila Cissé, a former finance minister who is considered well positioned, among 27 candidates, for a possible August runoff. “Why can’t people read my platform?” he continued. “Because people haven’t had the chance to go to school, to be educated.”

“If we wait for everything to be perfect, we will never be ready for elections,” said Mr. Cissé.

France, whose troops earlier this year beat back an Islamist push into the center of the country and whose money is critical for reconstruction, has been stern about keeping to an election timetable. The United States also encouraged having a vote. President François Hollande said in March that France would be “inflexible” about a July election date, and authorities in Mali heeded his words, leading some to complain that the former colonial master, having taken over the country’s defense policy — there are still some 3,200 French troops in Mali — was now running its electoral policy as well.

“We are doing this election in a hurry, and it is going to cost us dearly,” said Tiébilé Dramé, a former foreign minister who quit the race in protest and has been among its most vocal critics.

Mr. Dramé warned that a president elected in a botched vote would lack the “necessary legitimacy” for a country reeling from 18 months of crisis and years of corruption before it. The two top candidates — Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister, and Mr. Cissé — are veterans of the entrenched political class widely accused of bringing the country to its knees before the upheavals of 2012. They are likely to face off in an Aug. 11 runoff if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote.

Beyond problems with candidates, critics like Mr. Dramé pointed to other difficulties with Sunday’s balloting, saying that it effectively disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of citizens. In a nation of 16 million people, a list of nearly seven million registered voters was based on a 2009 census, so thousands who have come of age — reached 18 — since then were not on it and could not vote. “We have deprived these people of their constitutional rights,” said Mr. Dramé. As many as 350,000 could fall into that category, say elections experts.

In addition, few of the more than 500,000 refugees, internal and external, were likely to have voted. And although most of the electoral identity cards have been distributed to local voting centers, “nobody knows how many voters have gone to the centers to get their cards,” said a Western diplomat in the capital.

“People are indignant that they were enrolled but can’t get their electoral cards,” said Mr. Dramé.

But the pressure from the West trumped local concerns. “This is not going to be a perfect election,” said the Western diplomat. But “I think we’ll get a credible president out of it,” he added. And “the French absolutely don’t want a delay,” he said.

In the disputed North, occupied until recently by nomadic rebel separatists, the Tuareg, turnout appeared to be sparse; last week, five election officials were kidnapped, and later released, and independence-minded sentiment is still strong.

But, in the capital, the orderly turnout, vans blasting election-day music, and wax-print dresses bearing the candidate’s faces testified to a real enthusiasm for turning a difficult page in the country’s history.

“The country is ready to vote,” said Fatoumata Sidibé, an accounting student, who marked her ballot for Mr. Keita.

“The vote is very necessary,” said Djelimady Tounkara, a well-known guitarist in line to vote. “We have been without a president for a year.”