2023-06-23 19:40:16
Malians have approved, by a very large majority of 97% of the vote, constitutional amendments submitted to the polls by the military junta in power, the Malian electoral commission said on Friday. This adoption paves the way for elections in February 2024.
Published on: 06/23/2023 – 21:40
The results represent a plebiscite in favor of the military in power since 2020. Malians approved the draft new Constitution proposed to them with 97% of the vote.
The turnout was 39.40%, announced the electoral authority, which announced these provisional results on Friday June 23 during a ceremony at the International Conference Center in Bamako.
Turnout is traditionally low in Mali but the vote, which took place last Sunday, was also hampered in many localities in the center and north of the country, either by fear of jihadist attacks or by political disagreements.
The ballot was marred by incidents and irregularities, according to observers and opponents of the reform.
Read alsoConstitutional referendum in Mali: what are the main points of the new text?
Critics of the project describe it as tailor-made for keeping the colonels in power beyond the presidential election scheduled for February 2024, despite their initial commitment to handing over the place to civilians after the elections.
It strengthens the powers of the president, gives pride of place to the armed forces and highlights the “sovereignty”, mantra of the junta since its advent then the break with the former French dominant power and the pivot towards Russia.
The referendum is an important step on the path that is supposed to lead in March 2024 to a return of civilians to the head of the country.
It was the first ballot since the military took power by force in August 2020 and since then they have exercised almost without sharing.
The referendum, materializing a calendar of reforms and consultations planned until the presidential election, was carefully scrutinized for the indications it could deliver on the support of the population for the junta and its leader, the reputedly popular Colonel Assimi Goïta, as well as the domestic situation.
A heterogeneous opposition
The authorities have defended the reform as an essential stone in the overhaul they intend to lead of the Malian state.
The new Constitution is supposed to remedy the insufficiencies of that of 1992, readily designated as a factor in the bankruptcy of the State in the face of the multitude of challenges: jihadist propagation, poverty, ruin of infrastructure or dilapidation of the school.
The referendum coincided with another act of rupture by the junta: the demand last week for the withdrawal of more than 11,000 peacekeepers and nearly 1,600 police officers from the UN mission deployed in the country since 2013. .
The reform of the Constitution provides for amnesty for the perpetrators of coups prior to its promulgation, and fuels persistent speculation about a possible presidential candidacy of Colonel Goïta.
It crystallized a heterogeneous opposition, which managed to make itself heard.
Armed groups in the North who fought the central state before signing a fragile peace agreement with it in 2015, and who exercise broad control in the North, have prevented the vote from taking place on a text in which they say they do not find the 2015 agreement.
They denounced ballot box stuffing in the northern localities where the vote took place.
Influential religious organizations have united against the maintenance of the principle of secularism of the State in the Constitution.
One of the figures of this mobilization, Imam Mahmoud Dicko, delivered during a meeting for the no to a violent diatribe against the text and the junta.
First supporting the junta before becoming an ardent detractor, he had his passport confiscated Thursday at Bamako airport as he returned from Mauritania, according to his entourage.
With AFP
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