BAMAKO, Mali
Mali’s ruling junta on Monday
announced a delay to a presidential election scheduled for February that was
aimed at returning civilian leaders to power in the jihadist-hit West African
nation.FILE: A woman casts her ballot at a polling station in Bamako, Mali, on July 29, 2018.
The two rounds of
voting—initially set for February 4 and 18, 2024 – “will be slightly postponed
for technical reasons”, government spokesman Abdoulaye Maiga said in a
statement read out to reporters.
Those reasons include issues
linked to the adoption this year of a new constitution and a review of the
electoral lists, he said.
He also cited a dispute with
French company Idemia, which the junta says is involved in the census process.
“The new dates for the
presidential election will be communicated later,” Maiga said.
Authorities are also refusing
to organise legislative elections, initially scheduled for the end of 2023,
before the presidential election.
The junta “has
decided to organise, exclusively, the presidential election”, the statement
said.
Other elections will be held
on a schedule “established by the new authorities, under the directives of the
new president”.
The postponement is yet
another delay to the junta’s schedule for handing back power to elected civilians.
The soldiers, who carried out
back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, had earlier promised legislative elections
for February 2022.
But the junta, led by Assimi
Goita, announced at the end of 2021 that it was unable to respect the timetable
agreed with the regional bloc ECOWAS.
It said it needed more time to
carry out deep reforms.
Security situation
In response, ECOWAS in early
2022 imposed heavy sanctions on Mali, severely
affecting the poor and landlocked country.
It lifted them the following
July when the junta agreed to leave power in March 2024, and announced an
electoral calendar that set the presidential election for February 2024.
The junta had also scheduled a
constitutional referendum for March 2023, which finally took place in June.
Critics of the new
constitution describe it as tailor-made to keep the junta in power beyond the
presidential election.
Since Mali’s back-to-back
putsches, West Africa has seen a series of military coups, including in Burkina
Faso and Niger, which have also been hit by jihadism and violence, as well as
in Guinea.
The militaries in each case
have said they are carrying out “transitions” before a return to
“constitutional order”.
Mali currently faces
heightened activity by jihadist groups and a resumption of hostilities in the
north by armed separatist groups.
Since August, there has been a
series of attacks against army positions and civilians in the Timbuktu and Gao
regions.
The junta pushed out France’s
anti-jihadist force in 2022 and the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA in 2023.
It has turned politically and
militarily towards Russia.
Monday’s statement made no
mention of recent security developments, saying only that junta leader Goita
intends “to return to a peaceful and secure constitutional order, after
carrying out as a priority institutional political reform”.
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