Malian End of electoral campaign for first round

The campaign for the first round of Mali’s presidential election ended Friday, two days before the holding of a crucial vote for the country’s future. The Malian government declared Friday day off, to allow the maximum of Malians to withdraw their voter card. The latest figures show a total of 85% of 6.9 million voters had their voting cards. The last meetings in Bamako, including Dramane Dembélé, candidate of the main Malian party, the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adéma), and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, one of the favorites of the vote, gathered several thousand people. The three-week campaign took place without major incidents, each of the 27 candidates were crossing peacefully most of the major cities in the country, attracting many supporters in the South, much less in the North which three regions - Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal - represent two-thirds of the country but are less populated (10% of a population of 15 million inhabitants).