Legislative in Mali: provisional results of the second round are known

Text by: RFI Follow

The Malian Ministry of Territorial Administration communicated this Thursday, April 23, the provisional results of the second round of Sunday's legislative elections. The RPM, the presidential party, leads, followed by Adema its ally, then the URD, the main opposition party from which leader Soumaïla Cissé was kidnapped almost a month ago in the region from Timbuktu.

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With our correspondent in Bamako, Serge Daniel

The participation rate in the second round of legislative elections stands at 35.33%. The ruling party, the Rally for Mali, won 43 seats in the total of the two towers, but not the majority of the 147 deputies. One of its allies the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adema) wins 23 seats. Among the winning trio is also the Union for the Republic and Democracy, the URD, which keeps its cap of main opposition party.

Two political parties from a new bloc of presidential majority, the UDD and the MPM, also fared well, with respectively 4 and 11 deputies. In the future Parliament, 16 other Malian political parties will enter according to provisional full results.

RPM loses twenty seats

The ruling party has lost around 20 seats compared to the 2018 legislative elections. With 43 deputies, the formation of President IBK is far from having obtained a majority. The emblem of the Rally for Mali (RPM) is a weaver, but for these legislative elections, the presidential party did not necessarily weave its web well. With a deputy out of the 14 in Bamako, the RPM has rather bitten the dust in the capital even if it leads at the national level.

With 43 deputies, he will have to form alliances to obtain two majorities. First, the simple majority of the 147 seats of deputies in the Assembly. Then, the two-thirds majority of the Assembly required to pass certain reforms.

21 political parties represented

Theoretically, it is possible. Elected deputies from majority parties like Adema, UDD, Codem, Parena, or Asma of former Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maïga , who won 8 seats, can easily allow the presidential party to stand up to the Malian opposition. But as observers point out, the problem could come from within the majority itself.

Also leading in the capital, but third nationally, the URD of Soumaïla Cissé, held hostage for a month in northern Mali by an armed group , remains the main opposition party in Mali .

Another lesson from the provisional results: 21 out of over a hundred political parties in Mali are represented in the Assembly. Former Prime Minister Moussa Mara was elected. But Oumar Mariko lost his seat. He cried out for fraud and, like others, brought an action before the Constitutional Court.

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