Thousands of Malians voted in presidential elections Sunday in the capital, but others struggled in parts of the country’s north where some ballot boxes were burned and in the central region where voters feared threats by extremist groups.

Polls closed Sunday and officials began counting the votes. Results are expected within the week. If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent in the first round, Malians will vote in a second round on Aug. 12.

Voters have expressed concern about being targeted after al Qaeda’s Mali branch warned for months against going to the polls. Deadly communal clashes between ethnic groups and accusations of heavy-handed counterterror operations have complicated what President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita hopes will be an election victory leading him to a second term.

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The 73-year-old, who was elected in 2013, faces 23 candidates in the first round.

As he voted in Bamako, Keita commended Malians on a successful and peaceful day of voting.

“It is a real pleasure for me to perform this citizen act, and it is the start of victory for the people of Mali, who have voted in calm and serenity,” he said. “This vote will have demonstrated our democratic maturity and our status as a great people.”

His main challenger is 68-year-old Soumaila Cisse, his rival in 2013, who has criticized the president for not addressing Mali’s rising insecurity.

No polling stations opened in some central Mali Fulani villages under the control of jihadists, including Yamassadiou and Onde. And despite the presence of Mali’s army in Boulikessi, stations didn’t open there, said a security official in the region who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t permitted to speak to the press.

Only a few stations were closed in Douentza district in Mali’s central Mopti region, where armed men kidnapped the head of a polling station in Gandamia village, the official said. Though that particular station reopened, people fear going to the polls.

Opposition leader Cisse, who voted in his village, Niafounke in the Timbuktu region, said that in Dianke, ballot boxes were taken away. He also said that ballot materials for another village Berre, remained in Timbuktu.

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“Despite the difficulties of insecurity and transport, it was a duty for me to come and vote here with the people who trust me,” Cisse said. “Malians must vote, it is very important. Each Malian must also be vigilant against attempts of electoral fraud. There must be transparency.”

Several political parties have expressed doubts about a valid election after duplicate and fictitious polling stations were listed on the electoral commission’s website.

More than 8 million voters are registered.

The government and the electoral commission have promised a smooth vote, but many in Mali are still worried about postelection violence should Keita win in the first round.

“I voted, but all that people are saying is worrying me. I do hope there won’t be an election crisis,” said 67-year-old Ibrahim Traore.

Experts say Mali is less secure than in 2013, when French-backed forces pushed extremists in the north from their strongholds.

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A more assertive response by Mali’s security forces to the attacks has led to accusations by human rights groups of extrajudicial killings. In some areas neighbours have turned on each other, amid suspicions of influence by extremist groups.

Oumar Toure, a leader of a local civic association in Mopti, said things have shifted there.

“The current president IBK considers Mopti region his enemy, and he left it ... that’s why all the insecurity of the north has come to settle here,” said Toure. “In Mopti, it’s the law of the strongest.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Malians to maintain a peaceful course and said in a statement Saturday he was encouraged by a peaceful campaigning period, despite security challenges in the north and centre.

“The Secretary-General urges all political actors in Mali to commit to making this poll a peaceful, free and transparent process, and to resolve any possible dispute through the appropriate institutions in accordance with the law,” his statement said.

Meanwhile, Iyad Ag Ghaley, the leader of al Qaeda’s Mali branch known by its French acronym JNIM, sent a message on Telegram and Twitter saying that his organization opposes the elections.</s>BAMAKO (Reuters): In the five years since Malians last chose a president, they’ve suffered violence from Islamist militants, Tuareg separatists, drug traffickers, ethnic vigilantes and Malian security forces. Yet when it comes to elections, power has tended to be contested peacefully in Mali and diplomatic pressure will aim to keep it that way when its citizens go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether to give President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita a second term or hand the top job to one of his rivals.

“Mali has demonstrated the capacity over the years to deliver credible and peaceful elections, among the best in the region,” Mohamed Ibn Chambas, UN Special Representative to West Africa and the Sahel region, told Reuters at his office in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. “My plea is that candidates again show high responsibility,” he added. “We cannot afford a political crisis in Mali on top of the security crisis the country is already facing.”</s>LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Q central leader and former chief minister Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi’s efforts to form a coalition government in Punjab bore fruit on Friday when independent MPA-elect from PP-67 Mandi Bahauddin, Sajid Ahmad Khan Bhatti, announced joining the PML-Q. The newly elected member met PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi at their Lahore residence and announced his decision to join the PML-Q. Sources said more independent MPAs-elect are expected to join the PML-Q due to efforts of Ch Pervaiz Elahi. He is also in contact with Pakistan Muslim League-N MPAs-elect. Sources said the efforts were aimed at a coalition government of the PTI and PML-Q in Punjab.</s>BAMAKO (Reuters) - In the five years since Malians last chose a president, they have suffered violence from Islamist militants, Tuareg separatists, drug traffickers, ethnic vigilantes and Malian security forces.

Yet when it comes to elections, power has tended to be contested peacefully in the West African republic, and diplomatic pressure is aimed at keeping to keep it that way when its citizens go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether to give President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita a second term or hand the top job to one of his rivals.

“Mali has demonstrated the capacity over the years to deliver credible and peaceful elections,” Mohamed Ibn Chambas, United Nations Special Representative to West Africa and the Sahel region, told Reuters at his office in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

“My plea is that candidates again show high responsibility,” he added. “We cannot afford a political crisis in Mali on top of the security crisis the country is already facing.”

Eight million people are registered to vote, with polls opening at 8 a.m. (0800 GMT) and closing at six (1800 GMT).

Keita, 73, universally known as IBK, runs for re-election amid a mounting death toll from jihadist attacks, ethnic killings and armed forces abuses that have become a defining feature of his presidency, despite thousands of French troops deployed since 2013 to contain the violence.

He faces two dozen candidates of which only one, Soumaila Cisse, 68, is seen as having a strong chance of ousting him. Both men are from the Saharan nation’s political elite, and IBK beat Cisse in a run-off at the 2013 poll.

Both held final rallies attracting thousands of people on Friday night.

“There is still a lot to do. That’s why I am soliciting the Malian people to give us another term, not because I’m thirsty for power,” Keita said at a rally on a leafy square on the banks of the Niger river.

“Everywhere I’ve been I see a desire for change. Malians want nothing more to do with this regime,” Cisse told his supporters at his party headquarters.

All candidates have promised to reverse Mali’s decline and help end pervasive poverty. Mali is 14th from the bottom on the U.N. Human Development Index, despite being Africa’s third biggest gold exporter and a major cotton grower.

A billboard in the exhaust fume-choked capital Bamako depicts Keita in flowing white robes and a skull cap, urging Malians to “consolidate the peace.”

Yet since he has been in power, violence has worsened. Civil society website Malilink recorded 932 attacks in the first half of 2018, almost double that for all of 2017 and triple 2015.

In the north, where French troops stepped in to halt a Tuareg rebellion and jihadi takeover before the last poll, jihadists have killed more than 160 U.N. peacekeepers.

Timbuktu, once a Sahara desert tourist spot, is unstable, hit by Islamist militants as well as tensions between Arab and Tuareg traders and black Malians from the south.

Islamist violence has also spread to central Mali, where militants have attacked the pan-regional G5 Sahel force. Killings have begun to take on an ethnic tone, as the Islamists exploit tensions over access to land and water.

Human Rights groups have unearthed evidence that Malian troops were implicated in mass graves in central Mali. The Defence Ministry pledged to investigate.

Keita has played down the country’s security woes.

“There are pockets of violence, residues of terrorism that even (French forces) ... haven’t managed to vanquish from Malian soil,” he said after a tour of Mali’s diaspora, one of about 150 costly foreign trips that have been criticised by opponents since he took office.

“Are you going to blame all that on IBK?”

Whoever is to blame, the violence could deter many from voting in a nation with consistently the lowest turnout in West Africa - about 40 percent on average.

“Violence in the Mopti region and northern region is really going to depress turnout,” said U.S. researcher Bruce Whitehouse.

Discontent with IBK is palpable, and thousands protested against him in Bamako last month. Yet he has the benefit of incumbency and is likely to win, although probably only in a second round, diplomats say.

Though most expect a smooth election, there is a risk of a disputed poll turning violent. Opposition candidates are crying foul over alleged tampering with the electoral list.

“I’m sad to see a government that cheats, to see an electoral fraud in the offing,” Cisse told Reuters after his rally. “But we don’t have a plan-B. We must go the polls.”

If Mali can avoid a rancorous dispute over the result, that will sooth anxieties.

“That’s the metric the international community will use: ‘there you go, we had a peaceful election’,” Adam Thiam, a Malian analyst told Reuters in Bamako.

“This election is all about showing Mali is stabilising.”</s>LAHORE - Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar Sunday took suo motu notice of alleged torture by Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) MPA-elect Malik Nadeem Abbas Bara on police officers in Hanjarwal area of Lahore.

The top judge directed inspector general of police to arrest MPA-elect and insert terrorism charges in the FIR against him.

He also directed the interior ministry to place name of the MPA-elect on exit control list.

Inspector General of Punjab Police Kaleem Iman, however, told the court that 50 suspects had been booked by Hanjarwal police in the matter while 21 suspects had been arrested.

At this, the CJP directed the IG to arrest MPA-elect Bara without any delay and proceed against him in accordance with the law.

MPA Bara and other supporters tortured Hanjarwal SHO Rana Afzal and his driver when they reached his ‘Dera’ after receiving emergency call on 15 complaining massive aerial firing in the area.

According to police, Bara, his brother and supporters beat police officials with clubs, thrashed them and threatened them of dire consequences.

The police officials received multiple injuries and were shifted to a local hospital.

The video of aerial firing went viral on social media invoking strong criticism against the PTI and its slogan ‘New Pakistan’.
Malians go to the polls to elect a president.