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POLITICS-MALI: Worst Expectations Confounded

Almahady Cissé

BAMAKO, Aug 18 2007 (IPS) - As former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once remarked, “A week is a long time in politics.” By this token, a political landscape can alter even more in a month, recent developments in Mali being a case in point.

About a month ago, IPS highlighted a fear in the West African country that the number of women parliamentarians might be halved – or worse – during the latest legislative polls (see ‘ POLITICS-MALI: Bracing for “Zero to Six” in Parliamentary Elections’).

Korotoumou Mariko-Thera, spokesperson for the Framework for Co-operation of Women in Political Parties – an umbrella body – told the agency that the 2007-2012 legislature could even find itself without female representatives. In the previous parliament, 14 of the 147 legislators were women.

These concerns have been put to rest with the Aug. 12 announcement of final results from the polls, which took place over two rounds last month. While no women were elected during the first round of voting, 15 made it to office during the second round. In all, 1,408 candidates contested the ballot, 227 of them women (about 16 percent of the total); 26 women were on the ballot for the final round of voting.

“It’s a success that comforts us…as for this second round, in the best case we hoped to have 13 women (elected),” Mariko-Thera said in an interview with IPS.

News of the outcome came a week after the 15 days allocated to the Constitutional Court to declare the final results – a delay that court president Salif Kanouté ascribed to the institution’s efforts to make sound rulings in complex electoral disputes. A record 250 requests were made for provisional results to be nullified.

The results for the constituency of Koulikoro, in southern Mali, and for Timbuktu and Goundam in the north were overturned.

“Fortunately, this change…did not affect the women,” said Oumou Traoré-Touré, executive secretary of the Co-ordinated Women’s Associations and Non-governmental Organisations of Mali.

However, women still account for just 10.2 percent of the new parliament, even though they make up about half of Mali’s population. It is widely held that female representatives have to control about a third of legislative seats to exercise real influence in parliament.

Amidst relief that the July polls have not pushed back the clock concerning women’s representation in parliament, there are concerns about the way in which certain female candidates conducted their campaigns.

Political analyst Bassaro Touré says there were instances of women using money from potentially dubious sources, and cheating to gain the support of voters: “They have distributed mills, pots, bathtubs, mortars and pestles, sacks of grain, of salt, of cash, of soap…They have conspired with the representatives of the administration to come out ahead.”

He says female aspirants in effect adopted the tactics used by male candidates – abandoning traditional women’s issues such as the promotion of gender equality and the fight against female genital mutilation.

Astan Diallo, a sociologist, has similar views: “I think that they have done as the men do. One could not distinguish the men from the women. It was the same speeches, the same messes; the campaigns were identical.”

Money had played a decisive role in the electoral success of those women who emerged victorious from the second round of voting – more so than the strength of their arguments, she told IPS. “We must…call them (women) to order and not fear criticising them when it’s necessary and supporting them when it’s necessary…”

Mariko-Thera acknowledges that funding is central to campaigns, but says women also brought political acumen to bear in the final stages of the race to the legislature: “…for the second round, they knew to make strategic alliances with the different sectors of society and to opt for grass roots campaigning.”

During legislative elections in Mali, voters cast ballots for lists of candidates that have been submitted by political parties for constituencies. If no list emerges with a majority of votes, then a run-off poll is held, with voters choosing between the two lists that gained the most ballots during the first round of elections. The party whose list wins a majority of votes in the second round is permitted to fill every seat in the constituency from persons on its list.

Independent candidates are allowed to vie for seats in single-member constituencies.

“Of the 15 women elected, 14 are on the lists of political parties; and, one sole female independent candidate was elected in Bourem, in the north of the country,” said Boukary Daou, a journalist and political analyst based in the capital of Bamako.

He believes that women have a better chance of being elected to office via party lists than as independent candidates; this echoes findings that it is generally easier to convince parties to advance the political interests of women than to persuade communities to overcome traditional views of women that might confine them to the home.

When democratic elections were first held in Mali some 15 years ago, after a long period of one-party rule, only two women were elected to parliament. This figure increased to 18 during the next poll in 1997, but fell to 14 in the 2002 ballot.

Over six million of the country’s 13.8 million citizens were registered to participate in last month’s parliamentary poll; however, only about a third of this number actually did so – for both the first and second rounds of voting.