2023-06-18 06:55:08
Malians are called to the polls on Sunday in a referendum on a new Constitution. This is the first election organized by the transitional military authorities since they came to power three years ago.
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Some 8.4 million Malians are called upon to express themselves, Sunday, June 18, on the new Constitution defended by the military authorities in power.
Voters participating in this referendum, which opened from 8:00 a.m. (local and GMT), must choose between a yes and a no ballot, during a ballot contested by a heterogeneous opposition and which persistent insecurity compromises in several regions.
Among the changes proposed by the junta in relation to the 1992 Constitution, voters will decide whether or not to accept a strengthening of the powers of the president at the head of this country confronted with terrorist expansion and a multidimensional crisis: security, political , economic, humanitarian.
This acceptance is one of the stakes of the consultation. Critics of the project describe it as tailor-made for keeping the military in power beyond the presidential election scheduled for February 2024, despite their initial commitment to handing over the place to civilians following the elections.
Results are expected within 72 hours.
The victory of the yes seems acquired. But the extent will be scrutinized, such as participation, although traditionally low, and the conditions for the conduct of the ballot.
In an environment made difficult to decipher by the opacity of the system and the restrictions imposed on expression, the vote might deliver indications, to be taken with caution, on the support of the population for the junta and its leader, the reputedly popular Colonel Assimi Goïta, as well as on the internal situation.
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Difficult security context
The soldiers who took power by force in 2020 and exercise it without sharing claim to push back the terrorists on the ground. The vote takes place less than 48 hours following the resounding leave given by Bamako to the UN mission following ten years of presence. The authorities believe that the mission has failed and that Mali can assume its security by its “own means”.
But lingering insecurity is expected to ban voting over large swaths. Where it will take place, offices are always exposed to attacks. In the north, in the localities they control, including the stronghold of Kidal, the former rebels who signed a fragile peace should prevent the vote on a project where they say they cannot find the agreement they signed in 2015 .
They are one of the components of an opposition to the project which, although heterogeneous, has managed to make itself heard. The protest culminated on Friday with a meeting of those who reject the maintenance of the principle of secularism.
One of their leaders, the influential Imam Mahmoud Dicko, tutelary figure of the movement which led to the overthrow of the elected president in 2020, delivered a violent diatribe once morest the constitutional project and once morest the junta. He railed once morest a “secularism in the name of which the Koran has been trampled” and once morest a junta which “confiscated the people’s revolution” of 2020.
President’s powers strengthened
The authorities have invested a great deal in favor of this reform, which should make up for the insufficiencies of the 1992 Constitution, willingly pointed out as a factor in the bankruptcy of the State in the face of the multitude of challenges: spread of terrorism, poverty, ruin of infrastructures or school dilapidation.
The proposed Constitution gives pride of place to the armed forces. It highlights “sovereignty”, the mantra of the junta since its advent and then the break with the former French dominant power, as well as the fight once morest corruption, associated with the old regime.
It distinguishes itself above all by strengthening the powers of the president. It provides for amnesty for perpetrators of coups prior to its promulgation, and fuels persistent speculation regarding a possible presidential candidacy of Colonel Goïta.
In a final speech on Friday, Colonel Goïta called on his fellow citizens to vote “massively” for the project, which he presented as the guarantor of a “strong state”, “democratic governance” and ” renewed confidence” of Malians in the authorities.
With AFP
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