Mali's new president: What next? UNDER fierce pressure from Western governments, especially France, which led the dispatch of troops to Mali in January to prevent assorted jihadists from taking over the country, a presidential election was finally settled on August 12th - with mercifully little rancour. Soumaïla Cissé, a former finance minister, conceded defeat to Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, a former prime minister, in a run-off. After IBK, as he is widely known, had won the first round two weeks earlier by 40% to 20%, 22 of the other 25 candidates in the race pledged to back him. The day after the final poll Mr Cissé, despite initial claims of vote-rigging, called on Mr Keïta at his home in Bamako, the capital, to congratulate him, while declaring that he would keep the new president on his toes with a lively but legal opposition. With luck Malian politics should calm down, at least for a while. Mr Keïta had presented himself in the campaign as a decisive leader who would restore honour to a country that had been humiliated. A coup in March last year by angry soldiers disgusted by the mismanagement of the then civilian government was followed by the fall of the country's vast northern two-thirds to the rebels. That in turn precipitated a military intervention led by France, the former colonial power, which set about chasing the rebels into the country's rugged Saharan fringe. Mr Keïta can expect France to go on breathing down his neck. Since its intervention in January it has wielded much influence on Malian politics, but is keen to reduce its military presence to around 1,000 troops, while a UN peacekeeping mission swells to a promised 12,600. France and other foreign donors insisted that the interim government should stick to its original timetable for an election in July, despite widespread calls for a delay to sort out logistical problems. Though a fair number of voters turned out in Timbuktu and Gao, two northern towns that had been held by the rebels until the French intervened this year, few felt able to do so in Kidal, a north-eastern town closest to the rebel strongholds near Mali's northern border with Algeria. Mr Keïta's most urgent task now is to accommodate Tuareg rebels, many of whom are likely to be satisfied by a wide measure of autonomy, as opposed to out-and-out jihadists, who will have to be ruthlessly kept at bay, if not summarily defeated.