Mali: last meetings, last calls before presidential Sunday

After three short weeks of campaigning, the candidates for the presidential election in Mali held their last meetings on Friday and launched the final call for mobilization for Sunday's voting.

"My only crime, it's is the love that you carry me, "the outgoing president and candidate for a second term, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, told about 2,000 of his supporters gathered in a parking lot in the center of Bamako along the Niger River.

a few hundred meters away, its main opponent, Soumaïla Cissé, who is in a good position among the 23 challengers who will challenge on Sunday, also holds its last meeting. Despite the presence of protest activist Ras Bath, who is very influential with the youth, the crowd is smaller than on the presidential side.

The night had already fallen and the rain was redoubling when the head of state aged 73 years has appeared on a large stage, dressed in white as usual, under the shouts of "IBK president" launched by a master of ceremonies at the hand of private radio host.

"No one can handle Mali in five years, nobody, if IBK leaves, the next president will come, he will start from scratch again, we do not want that, we want continuity ", explains Cheickna Traoré, a young entrepreneur specialized in drilling well, installed with a group of friends in the middle of a row of mopeds, near the entrance of the meeting, placed under high security.

In front of an audience where young girls in jeans rub shoulders with mothers in colorful boubous and T-shir students t, the president plays on the emotion, evokes the "indestructible link between you and me".

He shines the cities of Mali which he visited, of Kidal (northeast), where he spent a " wonderful day and a memorable night ", in Timbuktu, where he expressed wishes" not for me but for Mali ".

" They say that I am a lazy king, but by doing nothing, we have made Mali is the first agricultural power in the region and our debt-to-GDP ratio is the best in UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) ", adds" IBK ", which was mainly spoken in French.

The time 'still explain that he had "solicited from the people a second mandate", "not by thirst for power" but because "things to do", Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta resumes the road to the presidential palace.

Fashionable bands are still on the bill this evening before Saturday break, but the host claiming that "the party continues", the rain is doubling and most of the activists have already left the scene. The campaign is over.