The team of the leading opposition candidate in Mali’s upcoming presidential election claimed Friday that there were “substantial anomalies” in the electoral register and warned of a possible “massive attempt at fraud” in the 29 July vote. Speaking at a news conference in Bamako, the campaign manager of opposition frontrunner, Soumaila Cisse, said the electoral register published online on 4 July was “totally different” from the one audited by the International Organisation of Francophonie on 27 April. The number of names on the online register totalled 8,105,154 voters, more than the 8,000,462 counted by the IOF, campaign manager Tiebile Drame said.
“It’s nothing more and nothing less than a parallel register,” he said, adding that it would provide a “comfortable” basis for fraud.
“We will not go to elections with such a register,” Drame said.
The register included names that appeared several times, potentially creating more than 275,000 “fictitious votes”, he said.
Full Article: Mali opposition frontrunner warns of potential fraud in presidential vote.
