Vote counting underway in Mali following Sunday's poll

Vote counting began in Mali on Sunday evening after an election to determine whether President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will win a second term, amid ethnic and jihadist violence that has dramatically worsened since he came to power five years ago.

Two dozen other candidates were contesting the presidency in a largely Saharan desert nation that has been fractured by a Tuareg rebellion and Islamist militancy across its north and central zones since the last poll in 2013.

Insecurity is such that in some parts of Mali, the vote simply did not happen, and the European Union observer mission urged the government on Saturday to publish a list of places that would be unable to vote, to quell suspicions by candidates of “fictitious polling stations”.

Voting was briefly suspended at a polling station in the village of Aguelhok in the northern region of Kidal after militants fired about 10 mortar bombs, said U.N. mission spokesman Olivier Salgado. No one was hurt. The attack was the kind that has become routine in Mali in the months leading up to the vote.

“One mortar landed around 100 metres from a polling station so there was a bit of panic,” Salgado said.

Eight million people were registered to vote. The candidates included businessmen, an astrophysicist, and just one woman.

Counting started in the riverside capital Bamako soon after polls closed at 6 p.m. (1800 GMT). In one polling station at a school, officials were already tallying votes on a blackboard.

Security concern of Malians

The threat of violence was on the minds of voters, in a country where on average only 40 percent turn out.

“I was scared to come and vote because of the insecurity, but I feel relieved because everything went well,” said 26-year-old housekeeper Mariam Cisse in the northern medieval Islamic city of Timbuktu, whose mud-walled mosques were tourist attractions until it became beset by Islamist militancy in 2012.

“I voted for Soumaila Cisse because I wanted power to change hands,” she said. The 68-year-old is considered the most likely to beat the incumbent.

A Reuters reporter said it was calm in Timbuktu on Sunday after days of unrest leading up to the polls.

One thousand km (600 miles) southwest, in Bamako, 32-year-old Hama Diallo just hoped for a safer future. “I hope the President-elect makes security a priority, without which nothing is possible.”

The head of the EU observer mission, Cecile Kyenge, said the mission had been informed of certain incidents in the north and centre, on which she declined to elaborate.

In the past three years, jihadist attacks have tripled in Mali and violent deaths doubled, according to the civil society website Malilink. Islamists have spread from the north to the centre and even targeted Bamako – as in 2015, when gunmen killed 20 people in a raid on a hotel – as well as Mali’s neighbours.

Islamist threat

Islamist groups are seen as the biggest threat to Western interests in the Sahara. They have hit foreign targets and kidnapped scores of Westerners, often holding them for years until they get multi-million dollar ransoms.

Last month, a suicide bomber drove a vehicle laden with explosives into the headquarters of the regional G5 Sahel anti-terrorist force in Severe, central Mali, killing three people.

Growth has averaged 5 percent under Keita, and Mali’s key exports of gold and cotton have flourished, as have agricultural staples such as rice, but insecurity has taken the shine off.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission to Mali has suffered more deaths than any in history, with some 170 peacekeepers killed, and human rights groups have raised the alarm over alleged executions by security forces. The Defence Ministry promised to investigate evidence linking them to mass graves.

Malian elections, however, have so far been generally peaceful. Yet opposition candidates have alleged tampering with the electoral list, and Cisse told thousands of supporters on Friday the government was planning to steal the election.

“Every Malian must stay vigilant in the face of this attempt at electoral fraud. This historic election cannot be pilfered,” he said, voting in his home town of Niafunke, near Timbuktu.

Keita rejected Cisse’s accusations as he voted in his home constituency of Sebinikro outside Bamako, a neighbourhood of dirt roads where chickens peck at piles of trash.

“This sterile polemic is perfectly useless. There has only ever been one electoral roll in Mali,” he told journalists, wearing his trademark white kaftan and skull cap.

On Saturday, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged “all political actors in Mali to commit to making this poll a peaceful, free and transparent process.”