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afrol News, 10 May - After the Malian Constitutional Court yesterday finally released the final results of the 28 April first poll round, everything is ready for Sunday's second round. The opposition has withdrawn its protests and an unpredictable race between the popular ex-President Amadou Toumani Touré and government party candidate Soumaila Cissé is upcoming. The well-planned but difficultly manageable first poll round between 24 candidates to the Malian presidency ended in court. A "significant number of irregularities" had been registered, including the counting process, which had not met basic standards of transparency. The first results, published by the Ministry of Home Affairs, gave a clear lead to Touré (28 percent), while numbers two (Cissé) and three (opposition candidate Ibrahim Boubacar Keďta) were close in votes, respectively 23 and 21 percent. Keďta and other candidates demanded the results be annulled. The Malian Constitutional Court took notice of opposition leader Keďta's complaint of "massive and systematic" vote-rigging, and made a recount of the votes. Yesterday, on Thursday, the Court published the final results of the first round of the elections. After nullifying over 500,000 ballots, the final results confirmed that Touré and Cissé would be the two candidates to go to the second poll round on Sunday. The Court however also confirmed that Keďta had been right in challenging the first results. It had registered illegal campaigning on election day, the voting by non-registered voters, election reports that were missing and other irregularities. The final results published by the Court showed that Touré had gathered 28.70 of the votes. Cissé lost most votes in the recount, gaining only 21.30 percent. Keďta had gotten 21.03 percent; only 4,000 votes less than Cissé. In an important step, Keďta accepted the Court's recount as conclusive. "You know I'm a law-abiding person. The court has (followed) the law," Keďta was quoted by the BBC as saying. Preparations for Sunday's second round could therefore go on. Keďta immediately announced that he gave his full support to candidate Touré, who from now on was to be considered the opposition's unifying candidate. Keďta and his party urged all Malians to vote or Touré. General Amadou Toumani Touré, now the favourite to the second poll round, is a popular person in Mali. Touré restored democracy in 1992, after he had disposed of military dictator Moussa Traoré in a coup. Heading a transitional committee, Touré helped prepare the first democratic elections in Mali's history in 1992, where incumbent President Alpha Konaré first came to power. Since then, he has been a highly profiled benefactor and is seen as a man of high personal integrity, proven by the fact that he did not run for president in 1992. This is indeed the first time Touré runs for any public office. Soumaila Cissé is the official candidate of the government party Alliance for Malian Democracy (ADEMA). Cissé resigned from his post as Infrastructure Minister to be able to contest the poll, following the regulations of Mali's electoral rules. With the support of the ADEMA government, Cissé has managed to arrange the most costly and visible election campaign throughout Mali, significantly increasing his chances. Cissé's bureaucratic image and him being a part of Bamako's high governmental circles - popularly perceived as corrupt - however speaks against
him.
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