2013 Malian presidential election


Presidential elections were held in Mali on 28 July 2013, with a second round run-off held on 11 August. Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta defeated Soumaïla Cissé in the run-off to become the new President of Mali.

Background

According to the 1992 constitution, elections should have taken place in 2012. The first round was originally scheduled for 29 April, and the second round scheduled for 13 May. The first round was also planned to include a referendum on revising the constitution.
The elections would have marked the end of the second term of office of President Amadou Toumani Touré, conforming to the Malian constitution which limits individuals to two presidential terms. Touré confirmed, at a press conference on 12 June 2011, that he would not stand for election again.

Insurgency and coup d'etat

In 2012, Tuareg and other peoples in northern Mali's Azawad region started an insurgency in the north under the banner of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad. The Malian Army complained that it was ill-equipped to fight the insurgents, who had benefited from an influx of heavy weaponry from the 2011 Libyan civil war as well as other sources. On 21 March 2012 elements of the army staged a military coup d'état and formed the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State. The scheduled elections were then called into question after coup leaders suspended the constitution and arrested government ministers, while promising that, at some time in the future, elections would be held to return governance to civilian control. Following the coup, the rebels made further advances to capture the three biggest cities in the north. On 1 April 2012, under pressure from the Economic Community of West African States, the leader of the junta Captain Amadou Sanogo announced that the constitution would be restored.
Following economic sanctions and a blockade by ECOWAS on the country, a deal brokered in Burkina Faso by President Blaise Compaoré under the auspices of ECOWAS, was signed that saw Sanogo cede power to Dioncounda Traoré to assume the presidency in an interim capacity until the election was held.
On 1 July 2013, 6,000 of a future total of 12,600 UN peacekeeping troops officially took over responsibility for patrolling the country's north from France and the ECOWAS' International Support Mission to Mali. The force would be led by former second-in-command in Darfur, Rwandan General Jean Bosco Kazura, and will be known as the MINUSMA. Though the group was expected to play a role in the election, the electoral commission's president, Mamadou Diamountani, said it would be "extremely difficult" to arrange for up to eight million voting identification cards when there were 500,000 displaced people as a result of the conflict.

Electoral organisation controversies

To improve the electoral process, the government decided to use the election process of the Administrative Census to Elections to further direct the Minister of Territorial Administration and Local Government and the General Administrator of Elections, General Kafougona Kone. The majority of political parties would prefer the use of another electoral system under the Administrative Census Vocation of Civil Status, an electoral process considered more reliable. However, the government considers that this second process with RAVEC presents a number of difficulties with identification of non-Malians living in the Côte d'Ivoire and there are a large number of corrections to be made in a very short time.
The cost of using this other process is estimated at 41 billion West African CFA francs. At a meeting between the government and political parties on 3 January 2012, the National Director of the Interior, to the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Local Government, Bassidi Coulibaly, acknowledged the weak influence of citizens for revision of the electoral lists.
Just as campaigning was about to get under way, the Malian government lifted the state of emergency in place in the country since the northern battles.
Although the jihadist group MUJAO warned people not to vote and threatened to attack polling stations, no violence occurred during the elections.

Candidates

Several candidates declared their intention to run for the original elections or were invested by their party.
On 3 August 2013, ADEMA candidate Dramane Dembélé, who placed third in the election, announced his support for Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in the second round, saying that "we are in the Socialist International, we share the same values". However, in endorsing Keita he contradicted the official stance of ADEMA, which had backed Keita's rival, Soumaïla Cissé, on the previous day. The party stressed that Dembélé was speaking only for himself and that the party still supported Cissé.