Top candidate's party in Mali accused of fraud
Mali candidate's backers accuse front-runner's party of ballot-stuffing in presidential runoff
An election worker tallies votes in a polling station, after the close of polls in Mali's presidential runoff, in Bamako, Mali, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013. From the ancient desert town of Timbuktu to refugee camps in neighboring countries, voters chose Sunday who should lead Mali out of the political upheaval that left the country's north in the hands of al-Qaida-linked militants for much of last year. Mali's next president will be tasked with not only rebuilding the country's shattered economy but also resolving a simmering separatist movement in the far north. (AP Photo/Thomas Martinez)
·Associated PressBAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Malian presidential candidate Soumaila Cisse's supporters on Monday accused the front-runner's party of stuffing ballot boxes as workers tallied votes on chalkboards from an election aimed at restoring stability after a rebellion, a coup and an Islamic insurgency.
Cisse's national campaign coordinator said that a ballot box full of votes had been discovered around the time polls opened Sunday at one Bamako polling station. Other stuffed ballot boxes were found at two mosques, Gouagnon Coulibaly alleged.
The campaign of front-runner Ibrahim Boubacar Keita denied the accusations leveled the day after the vote, which is aimed at unlocking $4 billion in aid promised by international donors.
"These appear to be the words of a bad loser," said Mahamadou Camara, a Keita spokesman.
Results are expected by Friday, though Keita is expected to easily win the second round. He received nearly 40 percent of ballots in the first round and endorsements from nearly all the also-rans.
Critics feared the election had been organized too quickly, coming only six months after a French-led military operation ousted Islamic radicals from the major towns of northern Mali. Technical glitches were reported during the first round, and Cisse also complained about the nearly 400,000 spoiled ballots.
Many voters also could not find their polling stations during the July 28 ballot or did not receive their voting cards in time. Participation nationwide in the first round averaged nearly 50 percent but was as low as 12 percent in the northern town of Kidal, where separatist sentiments remain high.
On Monday, European Union and African Union electoral observers offered praise for the Malian runoff vote. Participation was believed to be down to about 40 percent, observers said.
"On the whole, everything went normally, but I don't think that the Cisse camp spoke in a vacuum, but it's not for us observers to say whether these allegations are wrong or right. It's for the constitutional court to settle," said Eden Kodjo, the head of the AU observers' mission.
Ibrahima Sangho, president of the Malian electoral monitoring group known as APEM, said Sunday's second-round vote went smoothly and that his organization was impressed with the turnout.
"We think the winner is the people of Mali who have come out in large numbers to vote to show that the people have the will to pull the country out of crisis," he said. "However, no politician can run Mali as it has been run over the last 20 years. People are going to watch the new president closely and follow him closely over his campaign promises."
Louis Michel, the head of the European Union observer mission, also praised the vote.
"Malians should be congratulated because it seems to me they are regaining control of their democratic destiny, which is in fact nevertheless a tradition that exists in Mali," he said.
The election is critical to unlocking $4 billion in aid promised by international donors to rebuild the country after political chaos sparked a humanitarian crisis. A democratically elected government is one of the caveats set by the international community, and a transitional government has been in place since not long after the March 2012 coup.
In the aftermath of the government's overthrow, separatist Tuareg rebels and later al-Qaida-linked militants seized control of northern Mali's towns. The radical jihadists imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, turning the once-moderate Muslim country into a place where women were whipped for going out in public without veils.
France, Mali's former colonial ruler, launched a military operation in the African country in January after the extremists begin surging southward from their stronghold in the north. The Malian military has been able to regain control over the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu though its presence remains highly controversial in Kidal.
Tuareg separatists are still active there, and negotiations with the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, the name they give to their homeland, are among the obstacles facing Mali's next leader.
Nearly 200,000 Malians remain in refugee camps in neighboring Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, and an untold number of others are still living in the southern capital of Bamako instead of returning home to the north.
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Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Moustapha Diallo in Bamako, Mali also contributed to this report.
