Africa votes

Democracy has been put to the test in recent African elections.

This week's Africa Media Watch focuses on the fall-out from polls in Madagascar, Mali and Burkina Faso and looks ahead to Sierra Leone's key presidential elections.

The crisis in Madagascar rages on - despite a ruling from the constitutional court that declared Marc Ravalomanana the winner of last December's presidential poll.

Incumbent President Admiral Didier Ratsiraka has called for a second round of negotiations in Dakar, Senegal, and a referendum to end the crisis - an idea backed by an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) delegation on a recent trip to the island.

Madagascar crisis

But the Madagascar Tribune is not optimistic about the success of such a meeting.

"Pro-Ravalomanana officials are wondering about the usefulness of another round table in Dakar, when the resolutions of the first Dakar Accord were knowingly and blatantly violated by the admiral's camp."

Democracy is a matter of values, of principles and a state of mind

Burkina Faso's Sidwaya

The East African is also critical.

"Such a referendum would aggravate rather than heal the wounds of an already divided population."

It says that another vote would damage the democratic process in Madagascar.

"The message being sent by the OAU's posturing on the Madagascar crisis is that elections, vote recounts and court processes are of no consequence where long-serving incumbents chose to ignore the electorate's wishes."

The paper calls for international assistance to help solve the crisis.

"The international community needs to realise this before another Rwanda happens."

African model?

Mali, on the other hand, has been held up as a model of African democracy.

But the first round of the country's recent presidential elections has been marred by accusations of electoral malpractice.

Mali's Amadou Toumani Toure on the campaign trial

Former Malian Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who failed to make it to the second round, lodged an official complaint over the "grotesque and crude fraud" of the vote.

Online newspaper allAfrica.com questions whether the polls will indeed set the country on the path to democracy.

And it says the way in which Mr Keita reacts to defeat will determine how the result of the second round is greeted by Malians.

"It will determine whether the country will maintain its reputation as an African model or whether it will become one of those countries whose governments organise elections so they don't lose them."

Democratic fraud

The idea that democracy in Mali is not all that it is cracked up to be is repeated in several of the country's newspapers.

Le Patriote says that like all other former French colonies, the fate of Malian democracy is decided in Paris.

Between the general usurper and the unpopular billionaire, the Malian people have no choice

Mali's La Nouvelle Tribune

It reports that President Alpha Oumar Konare made two secret trips to France, on 28 April and 2 May.

A commentator in La Nouvelle Tribune is sceptical of the democratic credentials of the candidates.

It notes that the two candidates going head to head in the second round are former military leader Amadou Toumani Toure and Soumaila Cisse, the candidate of the ruling alliance.

The former is supported by outgoing President Konare. The latter is backed by the minister of territorial administration and local communities, the holder of the electoral machine, the commentator says.

"Between the general usurper and the unpopular billionaire, the Malian people have no choice," he adds.

Burkina's ballots

Reports have been more positive in Burkina Faso, whose recent parliamentary elections were the first poll in five years in which all opposition parties took part.

Prior to the vote an editorial in Le Journal du Jeudi called on people to heed the experience of France, where low turn out is believed to be one of the reasons behind far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's high scoring in the first round of the presidential elections.

"Vote, nothing else matters," it said.

This was the first election in Burkina Faso when voters were presented with a single voting slip bearing the names of all the candidates.

But Sidwaya says that democracy is not about ballot boxes or ways of voting.

"Democracy is a matter of values, of principles and a state of mind."

Not winning, but taking part

And now all eyes turn to Sierra Leone, as it prepares for its first elections since the end of a 10-year civil war.

The country's Concord Times finds it difficult to gauge the "political temperature".

Sierra Leone prepares to vote

"If Sierra Leone People's Party has a rally today, because of the music and exhilarating atmosphere, there will be a large turn out. The crowd would shout 'wu-teh-the' till they lost their voices. If it is All People's Congress, they would be there too, shouting: 'Osayi, Owayi'," the paper notes

But an editorial in the Standard Times says that the winner is not important, it is the way the polls are conducted that matters.

"If Sierra Leone is to produce the required leadership capable of transforming yesterday's agonies to tomorrow's laughter, the people who swallowed the bitter pill of yesterday must be free from the shackles of political manipulation."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.