The people of Mali voted in a long-delayed parliamentary election on Sunday, despite an insurgency in its central and northern regions, recent kidnapping of the main opposition leader, and concerns about security and coronavirus pandemic, reported Reuters.
The parliamentary election will see new MPs elected to the 147-seat National Assembly for the first time since 2013 when President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s Rally for Mali party won a substantial majority.
The poll, which was originally scheduled to be conducted in 2018 following Keita’s re-election, has been postponed several times since then out of security concerns.
While the coronavirus pandemic posed a further threat to the vote, the authorities insisted to go ahead with the voting, promising to enforce additional hygiene measures to protect the West African nation’s 7.6 million voters.
Last week, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had ensured that the people that the elections would be conducted with due respect to preventive measures against the coronavirus spread. He noted that the elections were crucial for Mali’s peace efforts.
Although the election authorities did not release official turnout figures after the polls closed in the evening, at around midday, observers from a group of civil society associations had put the turnout at a mere 7.5%.
Prime Minister Boubou Cissé admitted earlier that the voting turnout was not satisfactory.
“I appeal to the voters: remember to respect the barrier gestures and use the sanitary measures,” he said as he voted.
The prime minister added that the numbers voting were “sufficiently satisfactory.”
On Wednesday, Mali’s main opposition leader Soumaila Cisse was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on in the Timbuktu region. The head of URD (Union of the Republic and Democracy), Cisse, 70, emerged second in 2018 presidential election. His whereabouts are still unknown.
But his party called for mass participation in the legislative election despite Cisse’s kidnapping.
“We have to make the party come out even bigger from this ordeal,” the party appealed in a statement.
