“To all the ones who have experienced horror, the nightmares of our recent history, I want to promise this will never happen again,” Mali’s president Ibrahim Keita said during his inauguration after his party RPM and his political allies won a comfortable majority in a parliamentary election intended to seal to a return to democratic civilian rule following an army coup in March 2012, iolnews quoted a Reuters report.

Completion of the vote is expected to unlock $3.25 billion pledged by donors to rebuild Mali and develop the lawless desert north, where Islamists seized control in the aftermath of the coup.

France intervened militarily in January to drive the al Qaeda-linked fighters from northern towns, clearing the way for a presidential election won by Keita.

Keita’s party RPM party won the second round of the election after it secured 61 of a total of 147 seats in parliament, according to chief of staff Mahamadou Camara.

Minister of Territorial Administration Moussa Sinko Coulibaly said just over 37 percent of Mali’s 6.8 million registered voters participated in the polls. The first round of the presidential election in July saw record turnout of 49 percent.