BAMAKO: Malians voted on 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.
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.
Goita was among the first to cast his ballot, while voters flocked to polling stations in the capital, Bamako.
“Today is a historic day. This vote will change many things... That’s why I voted ‘yes’, for a new Mali,” said civil servant Boulan Barro.
The danger of groups attacks looms over central and northern regions, meaning the vote is not being held in some parts of the country, including the town of Kidal, a stronghold of former rebels.
In Menaka, a northern region contending with rebels linked to the Islamic State group, voting was limited to its capital due to insecurity, local elected officials said. Turnout will be seen as an indicator of the junta’s ability to restore stability and generate popular enthusiasm for its agenda.
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 aligned with Al-Qaeda-linked members to seize vast swathes of territory.
Former colonial power France stepped in and helped push back the group, but attacks have continued, and Bamako has since broken its alliance with Paris in favour of Russia.
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.
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”. — AFP
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