Yet when it comes to elections, power has tended to be contested peacefully in the West African republic, and diplomatic pressure is aimed at keeping to keep it that way when its citizens go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether to give President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita a second term or hand the top job to one of his rivals.
“Mali has demonstrated the capacity over the years to deliver credible and peaceful elections,” Mohamed Ibn Chambas, United Nations Special Representative to West Africa and the Sahel region, told Reuters at his office in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
“My plea is that candidates again show high responsibility,” he added. “We cannot afford a political crisis in Mali on top of the security crisis the country is already facing.”
Keita, 73, universally known as IBK, runs for re-election amid a mounting death toll from jihadist attacks, ethnic killings and armed forces abuses that have become a defining feature of his presidency, despite thousands of French troops deployed since 2013 to contain the violence.
He faces two dozen candidates of which only one, Soumaila Cisse, 68, is seen as having a strong chance of ousting him. Both men are from the Saharan nation’s political elite, and IBK beat Cisse in a run-off at the 2013 poll.
Both held final rallies attracting thousands of people on Friday night.
“There is still a lot to do. That’s why I am soliciting the Malian people to give us another term, not because I’m thirsty for power,” Keita said at a rally on a leafy square on the banks of the Niger river.
“Everywhere I’ve been I see a desire for change. Malians want nothing more to do with this regime,” Cisse told his supporters at his party headquarters.
All candidates have promised to reverse Mali’s decline and help end pervasive poverty. Mali is 14th from the bottom on the U.N. Human Development Index, despite being Africa’s third biggest gold exporter and a major cotton grower.
