It is the first time that they have voted on the future of their country in crisis since the advent of the military three years ago. About 8.4 million Malians are called upon to vote on a new Constitution, by referendum, “yes” or “no”, Sunday, June 18, from 8 a.m. local time (10 a.m. French time). A poll that is contested by a motley opposition and that persistent insecurity compromises in several regions.
Among the changes proposed by the junta compared 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 the expansion of jihadists and a multidimensional crisis: security, political , economic, humanitarian.
This acceptance is one of the challenges 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 hand over to civilians after the elections. Results are expected within seventy-two 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 could 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.
The soldiers who took power by force in 2020 and exercise it without sharing claim to push back the jihadists on the ground. The vote takes place less than forty-eight hours after the resounding leave given by Bamako to the UN mission after ten years of presence. The authorities believe that the mission has failed and that Mali can assume its security by its “own means”.
“Sovereignty”, the mantra of the junta
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 their stronghold of Kidal, the former rebels who signed a fragile peace should prevent the vote on a project in which 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 against the constitutional project and against the junta. He railed against a “secularism in whose name the Quran was trampled on” and against a junta that “confiscated the people’s revolution” of 2020.
The authorities have invested a great deal in favor of this reform, which should make up for the shortcomings of the 1992 Constitution, 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 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 against 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 about 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.
