Malians voted on Sunday in a referendum on a draft new Constitution, the first vote since the advent of the junta which had test value but whose jihadist threat and political disagreements prevented the holding in many localities of the north and the center .
About 8.4 million Malians were called upon to say yes or no to the text submitted to them by the junta in power since 2020. It strengthens the powers of the president, but comes up against challenge from a motley opposition, in particular influential organizations nuns hostile to the maintenance of the principle of secularism of the State.
Results are expected within 72 hours.
Voters went in large numbers to the polling stations in Bamako, before closing at 6:00 p.m. (local and GMT) and the start of the count, noted an AFP correspondent. Junta leader Colonel Assimi Goïta was among the first to vote in Kati, near Bamako.
“I am convinced that this referendum will pave the way for a new Mali, a strong Mali, an effective Mali, a Mali at the service of the well-being of the population,” he said.
But feedback from the rest of this vast country indicates that, as expected, armed groups from the north blocked the consultation in the strategic city of Kidal and its region.
The former rebel movements, signatories of a fragile peace with Bamako, refused to allow the delivery of electoral material there for a consultation on a project where they say they cannot find the agreement they signed in 2015.
In the Ménaka region (northeast), which has been under pressure from the Islamic State organization for months, operations were limited to the regional capital due to insecurity, elected officials reported.
A consortium of national civil society observers, MODELE, supported by the European Union, reported in a press release “the non-functioning due to insecurity” of more than 80 polling stations in the Mopti region, in the center, one of the centers of violence that has bloodied Mali since 2012.
He mentioned the transfer of several other offices to the city of Bankass “due to insecurity”. He mentioned, without further details, a “terrorist attack” which disrupted the vote in Bodio, still in the center.
At the office of the Mamadou Goundo Simaga school in Bamako, placed under the surveillance of the security forces, the voters, as elsewhere, chose in the voting booth between a white ballot for the yes and red for the no, and introduced it into an envelope they placed in a transparent ballot box.
“Today is a historic day. This vote will change many things in the institutional architecture, social and economic life. It’s a good text, that’s why I voted yes, for a Mali refounded”, explained Boulan Barro, civil servant.
Mariam Diop, 30, accompanied by her husband, took the opposite side: “I came to vote as a good citizen, but I am against the project. The concerns of the Muslim religion are not taken into account at all, it that’s why I voted no”.
Among the changes compared to the 1992 Constitution, the acceptance or not of a strengthening of presidential powers is one of the issues 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 after the elections.
The victory of the yes seems acquired.
But in an environment made difficult to decipher by the opacity of the system and the restrictions imposed on expression, the extent of this victory, the turnout, although traditionally low, and the conditions of the conduct of the ballot could provide indications on the popular support for the junta and its leader, the reputedly popular Colonel Goïta, as well as on the domestic 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 48 hours after the resounding leave given by Bamako to the UN mission after 10 years of presence. The authorities believe that the mission has failed and that Mali can assume its security by its “own means”.
The proposed Constitution gives pride of place to the armed forces. It distinguishes itself above all by strengthening the powers of the president. It provides for amnesty for the perpetrators of coups d’etat prior to its promulgation, and fuels persistent speculation about a possible presidential candidacy of Colonel Goïta.
18/06/2023 21:06:22 – Bamako (AFP) © 2023 AFP