The constitutional referendum scheduled for March 19 by the military junta in charge of Mali has been temporarily postponed to better shape the development of the plebiscite, as explained Friday by the spokesman of the Malian military government, Colonel Abdulaye Maiga, who hopes that the process will not be significantly delayed.
Maiga indicated that, with this delay, the referendum process aims to fully adhere to the recommendations made in 2021 by the so-called National Conference for the Refoundation of Mali, a forum organized by the military and its allies under the boycott of the opponents of the army and the criticism of the international community.
It was precisely at this conference that the Malian military leaders decided to extend by five years the so-called »transition period» after their 2020 coup, an excessively long period in the opinion of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
A subsequent negotiation succeeded in reducing the period to 24 months in exchange for the withdrawal of the pan-African group’s sanctions on the Malian junta.
Mali’s current leader is Colonel Assimi Goita, who led in August 2020 an uprising against then-President Ibrahim Boubcar Keita and subsequently led a second coup d’état in May 2021 against Mali’s transitional authorities–at which time he ousted the president and prime minister, Bah Ndaw and Moctar Ouane–to eventually consolidate his rise to power.
In Friday’s communiqué, picked up by Radio France International (RFI), the military government calls for calm about the transition process by »assuring national and international opinion that the return to constitutional order remains the junta’s top priority.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
