By all major reports from Mali, Sunday’s presidential runoff seems to have concluded freely and peacefully, and election authorities expect to have finished the vote count by the end of the week. 

It’s a major step to restoring decades-long democratic rule in Mali after a March 2012 military coup destabilized the country and accelerated the advance of Tuareg separatists in northern Mali and the infiltration of Islamic rule throughout much of the north through the end of last year.

Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta, a former prime minister in the 1990s, led the first round of the vote with 39.2% of the vote to just 19.4% for former finance minister Soumaïla Cissé, and he received the backing of Mali’s largest party, the Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali (ADEMA, Alliance for Democracy in Mali).

You can read more about Keïta here, more background on the runoff here, and more about the politics of Mali here.