Mali’s Constitutional Court on Thursday rejected the appeal filed by some opposition parties in the country challenging the results of the July 29 presidential election which was marred by violence and accusations of fraud.

The president of the country’s highest court, Manassa Danioko declared that most of the opposition’s applications were not filed within the constitutionally required time limit and as such were inadmissible before it.

This was Mali’s second presidential election since a 2012 coup enabled Tuareg rebels and allied Islamist fighters to take over the north.

The court also confirmed August 12 as the run-off date, disclosing that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita received 41.7 percent of the vote while his closest challenger, Soumaila Cisse got 17.7 percent.

“Considering that the candidate, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita obtained 1,331,132 votes and the candidate, Soumaïla Cissé 567,679 votes, it is necessary to declare them candidates in the second ballot of August 12, 2018 of the election of the President of the Republic,” Danioko said.

One of the losing candidates in the first round polls, Cheick Modibo Diarra said despite the Court’s ruling, he would not instruct his supporters on who to vote for in the run- off, calling on them to unite for the country’s future.

“Replacing Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta with Soumaïla Cissé is not alternation, is not change. For us in any case it’s nothing more or less than a simple game of musical chairs. We say that each entity of our group keeps its autonomy and is thus free of his choice in this second round’‘, Diarra told a news conference in Bamako, the country’s capital.

According to the final results proclaimed by Constitutional Court president, Keïta, who is running for a second term at the age of 73, finished well ahead of the first round with 41.70% of the votes.

His rival as in 2013, 68-year-old Cissé who has since claimed that these results were neither sincere nor credible, saw his score slightly revised down to 17.78% as against the initial 17.8 percent.

The results of the first round, which were requested by both the opposition and the international community, were finally published on Wednesday evening on the website of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, which stated categorically that the figures had no legal value.