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The Malian transitional authorities announced Friday the postponement of the constitutional referendum scheduled for March 19, while ensuring that they would respect their commitments regarding a return of civilians to the head of the country in 2024.
THE transitional authorities of Mali announced on Friday March 10 the postponement of the constitutional referendum scheduled for March 19. This referendum is an important step towards the elections, scheduled for 2024, supposed to ratify the return of civilians to power. The Malian leaders nevertheless assured that they would respect their commitments in this regard.
“The date of the referendum scheduled for March 19, 2023 (…) will be slightly postponed”, declared in a press release read to the press Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, government spokesperson. This referendum is the first step supposed to be validated by the vote on the way to elections in February 2024 and a return of civilians to power.
The transitional authorities justify this postponement by the installation of representations of the electoral management body in all regions of the country and by the desire to popularize the draft new Constitution.
“The new date of the referendum will be fixed, following consultation with the independent electoral management authority and all the actors in the electoral process”, adds the press release.
This Constitution is a key element of the vast reform project invoked by the military to justify continuing to lead this country until 2024, faced with the spread of jihadism and a deep multifaceted crisis.
The February 2024 deadline still applies
The version presented as the final version of the Constitution, delivered on February 27 to Colonel Assimi Goïta, affirms the “attachment to the republican form and the secularism of the State”.
With this postponement, the military misses the first deadline of a calendar of consultations and reforms that they themselves communicated and which must lead to elections in February 2024 with a view to a return of civilians to business. The referendum is the first stage supposed to be validated by the vote.
Colonel Maïga minimized the scope of this setback. “The timeline is a planning tool,” he told reporters. “The deadline remains the date that we were able to negotiate with ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) and the Head of State is firmly committed to respecting this date” of 2024, a- he said.
The timetable drawn up by the junta and its commitment to give way in March 2024 following elections in February had convinced ECOWAS in July 2022 to lift a heavy regime of trade and financial sanctions imposed on Mali, a poor and landlocked country, plagued by the economic stagnation in addition to insecurity.
ECOWAS, faced since the first putsch by Malian colonels in August 2020 with a series of coups in the sub-region, had taken these retaliatory measures in January 2022 when the military planned to maintain it for up to five years.
The transitional authorities justify the postponement of the referendum by the time necessary for the installation on the territory of the representations of the electoral management body, and by the desire to popularize the constitutional text.
Amnesty laws for acts prior to the Constitution
“The new date of the referendum will be fixed following consultation with the independent electoral management authority and all the actors in the electoral process”, says the government press release.
The project significantly strengthens the power of the president. In the new Constitution, it is the president who “determines the policy of the Nation”, and no longer the government; the president appoints the prime minister and ministers and terminates their functions. The President can dissolve the National Assembly.
Pressure from ECOWAS for colonels not to stand for election has not dispelled speculation regarding Colonel Goïta’s intentions in 2024.
The draft constitution affirms that the Mali is an “independent, sovereign, unitary, indivisible, democratic, secular and social republic”, while imams contest the principle of secularism and have called on the faithful to oppose it.
The project proclaims any coup “imprescriptible crime”. But the putschists of 2020, who did it once more in 2021 to consolidate their hold, would be sheltered since the facts prior to the promulgation of the Constitution would be covered by amnesty laws.
Mali has been plagued since 2012 by the spread of jihadism and violence of all kinds. The transitional authorities pushed French soldiers out in 2022 in a climate of great acrimony and turned militarily and politically towards Russia.
With AFP
