The internal face of this confidence-building equation, according to a number of voters interviewed here, is the 68-year-old Mr. Keita, familiarly known by his initials, “I.B.K.” Voters say they remember his role as prime minister in the mid-1990s when student protesters shut down schools for weeks.

“The citizens were exasperated by the violence of the students,” said Daniel Amagoin Tessougué, now the chief prosecutor in the Bamako district and a judge at the time. “There were barricades everywhere. I.B.K. said, ‘Enough of this chaos.’ He brought out the police, and stepped on them. That calmed things down.”

The man most likely to be chosen to lead Mali out of its troubles lives in a sprawling, walled compound stalked by exotic crested birds, peppers his conversation with Latin phrases, and fluently cites French cultural heroes like Pierre Loti and Darius Milhaud. In an interview with several reporters here at his residence, Mr. Keita spoke of himself, often in the third person and in a low, confident mumble, as a “man of culture, a man who is open to the world,” belying his head-cracking reputation.

As president of the country’s National Assembly, Mr. Keita spent years opposing the deposed former president, Amadou Toumani Touré, now widely reviled in Mali as having brought the country to its knees through corruption, and he lost two elections to Mr. Touré. The military junta that overthrew Mr. Touré last year did not arrest or torture Mr. Keita, unlike other politicians, including his opponent, Mr. Cissé, and during this election he had to battle suggestions that he is too close to the coup leaders.

“What head of state would not want to have good relations with his military?” Mr. Keita asked during the interview. “I had no reason to court those young men,” he said. Specifics about his plans for Mali were lacking, but he boasted that the French president, François Hollande, “is a good friend.”

Critics say he lived large during his six years as prime minister.

“He has a certain sense of the state,” said his former cabinet director, Moussa Guindo. “He wants to give the state all of its prestige. I.B.K. has the sense of a certain prestige of power, and sometimes that costs.”

Indeed, a weekly newspaper here, Le Sphinx, has published reports detailing lavish overspending by Mr. Keita. But he dismissed the reports. “It’s not the best source,” he said in the interview. The paper’s editor, however, said that Mr. Keita had never formally denied the reports.