Mali junta holds vote on new constitution
Malians voted Sunday on whether to back a draft constitution drawn up by the governing junta which has fuelled speculation that the country’s strongman ruler will seek election.
The West African nation has been under military rule since an August 2020 coup, which followed years of instability marked by insurgencies and political and economic crisis, according to AFP.
Some 8.4 million citizens are eligible to vote in the referendum on the new text in the first electoral test for leader Colonel Assimi Goita, 40, who has vowed to return the country to civilian rule in 2024.
The vote was not held in some parts of the country due to the lack of security, including the town of Kidal, a stronghold of former rebels.
The junta has advertised the new constitution as the answer to Mali’s inability to tackle its multiple crises.
Mali’s recent woes began in 2012, when separatist insurgents in the north – long seen as marginalized by the southern government – aligned with Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to seize vast swathes of territory.
Disputed parliamentary elections in March 2020, followed by mass protests against a government unable to rein in the insurgency, corruption and economic crisis, ended in a coup.
Goita initially appointed an interim president but kicked him out in a second coup in 2021 and stepped into the top job himself.
Now doubts are swirling over his commitment to step down after elections planned for next year.
The junta called on Friday for the immediate departure of the country’s UN peacekeeping mission, a central and controversial actor in a security crisis that has claimed the lives of nearly 200 peacekeepers in the last decade.
Mali had increasingly imposed operational restrictions on the peacekeepers, ultimately accusing the mission on Friday of not only being a “failure”, but even becoming “part of the problem”.