In Mali’s Election, Dashes of Optimism and Realism By ADAM NOSSITER August 11, 2013 BAMAKO, Mali — In rain and mud, voters in Mali trickled into darkened polling stations on Sunday, hoping a vote for president will pull their country out of one of West Africa’s deepest government collapses since the colonial era. Nothing was guaranteed, as the two political veterans competing for votes had played big roles in a system that melted in the face of a military coup, the breakdown of Mali’s army, an armed takeover of two-thirds of the country by jihadists linked to Al Qaeda and a humiliating rescue by French troops in January. But some citizens who braved Sunday’s downpours said the election was proof that Mali — impoverished, landlocked, much of it desert, and preyed on by Islamists — was intent on flying right and renewing a democratic tradition after 18 months of armed turmoil. Record turnout in a first round of elections last month, steady voting on Sunday and electoral mechanics praised by outside observers were all cited as evidence. The front-runner, a Charles de Gaulle-quoting former prime minister who reads French poetry in his spare time, who once jailed rioting student protesters and who has a fondness for the ceremonials of office, according to a former aide, was cited by many voters as the tough-guy statesman needed to restore Mali’s “honor” — as billboards by the candidate, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, put it all over Bamako, the capital. Patient voters checked plastic ID cards on Sunday against lists plastered on cracked walls, a surprisingly orderly scene in an election organized in haste, and under intense pressure from donors on whose good will Mali is dependent. About $4 billion in aid was promised at a meeting in Brussels in May by Western governments alarmed at the country’s fall to the jihadists, but only if Mali shed its unelected stand-in government, a makeshift put in place after its president was ousted in the March 2012 coup. Mali’s economy shrank 1.2 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Unfinished construction dots Bamako, and market-stall vendors clutch at rare foreign visitors; aid from the outside will be crucial for the country’s future. Still, during the short campaign, interrupted by the end of Ramadan in a country that is 90 percent Muslim, neither Mr. Keita, who got nearly 40 percent in the first round, nor his challenger, Soumaila Cissé, a former finance minister who came in a distant second with 19 percent, dwelt on Mali’s foreign dependence. Instead, Mr. Keita vowed to return the country’s lost “dignity,” an oblique reference to his hero de Gaulle’s role after World War II and to the serial humiliations Mali’s sovereignty has suffered in the past year. The voters on Sunday, however, appeared to be under no illusions. “A country like ours, with no resources, that needs aid, could only have followed this path, to organize an election,” said Daye Tall, a pharmacist who had just voted at a dilapidated school in the Lafiabougou neighborhood of the capital. Sheep nibbled weeds among the forlorn, crumbling classrooms and small boys played soccer in the mud as the voters lined up calmly. “Confidence has been lost, so we needed this leap forward to convince the international community,” Mr. Tall added. The internal face of this confidence-building equation, according to a number of voters interviewed here, is the 68-year-old Mr. Keita, familiarly known by his initials, “I.B.K.” Voters say they remember his role as prime minister in the mid-1990s when student protesters shut down schools for weeks. “The citizens were exasperated by the violence of the students,” said Daniel Amagoin Tessougué, now the chief prosecutor in the Bamako district and a judge at the time. “There were barricades everywhere. I.B.K. said, ‘Enough of this chaos.’ He brought out the police, and stepped on them. That calmed things down.” The man most likely to be chosen to lead Mali out of its troubles lives in a sprawling, walled compound stalked by exotic crested birds, peppers his conversation with Latin phrases, and fluently cites French cultural heroes like Pierre Loti and Darius Milhaud. In an interview with several reporters here at his residence, Mr. Keita spoke of himself, often in the third person and in a low, confident mumble, as a “man of culture, a man who is open to the world,” belying his head-cracking reputation. As president of the country’s National Assembly, Mr. Keita spent years opposing the deposed former president, Amadou Toumani Touré, now widely reviled in Mali as having brought the country to its knees through corruption, and he lost two elections to Mr. Touré. The military junta that overthrew Mr. Touré last year did not arrest or torture Mr. Keita, unlike other politicians, including his opponent, Mr. Cissé, and during this election he had to battle suggestions that he is too close to the coup leaders. “What head of state would not want to have good relations with his military?” Mr. Keita asked during the interview. “I had no reason to court those young men,” he said. Specifics about his plans for Mali were lacking, but he boasted that the French president, François Hollande, “is a good friend.” Critics say he lived large during his six years as prime minister. “He has a certain sense of the state,” said his former cabinet director, Moussa Guindo. “He wants to give the state all of its prestige. I.B.K. has the sense of a certain prestige of power, and sometimes that costs.” Indeed, a weekly newspaper here, Le Sphinx, has published reports detailing lavish overspending by Mr. Keita. But he dismissed the reports. “It’s not the best source,” he said in the interview. The paper’s editor, however, said that Mr. Keita had never formally denied the reports. Voters did not appear worried about this reputation in any case, betting more that Mr. Keita, with his veiled promises to bring to heel the fractious north, would get tough on the nomadic Tuareg rebels whose uprising set off the country’s disastrous spiral last year. “A prime minister in this country, he feeds at the trough. You can’t be prime minister in this country and not guzzle,” said Yakuba Sankaré, a vendor of traditional medicines at the downtown market. “It’s obligatory.” Mr. Sankaré said he planned to vote for Mr. Keita. “I.B.K. guzzled, but not as much as the others. But if he’s still guzzling in five years,” the length of a presidential term here, “we’ll throw him out in five minutes.”
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 07:00:50 +0000
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