The junta in power in Mali announced on Monday a postponement of the presidential elections scheduled for February 2024, aimed at returning power to civilians, following a double military coup in 2020 and 2021, AFP and News.ro report.
Colonel Assimi Goita at the swearing in of the president in 2021Photo: Nicolas Remene / Zuma Press / Profimedia
The previously held dates, February 4 and 18, 2024, in order to organize the two rounds of these elections “will be slightly postponed for technical reasons”, announced a spokesman for the Government, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, in a statement that he read it in front of some journalists in Bamako.
The authorities cite among the “technical reasons” factors related to the adoption in 2023 of a new Constitution and the revision of electoral lists, but also a dispute with a French company – Idemia – involved, according to them, in the census process.
“The new data of the presidential elections will be the subject of a later release”, announces the Government of Mali.
In June, in a referendum denounced as “the worst election in history” by the opposition, Mali residents approved a new Constitution that allows certain members of the junta to run in the next presidential election.
The military junta ruling Mali launched a military rebellion in August 2020 that ousted then-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, installing a civilian transitional government with members of the opposition.
But just a few months later, in May 2022, the Constitutional Court of Mali declared Colonel Assimi Goita, the leader of the military junta, as head of state and president of the transition tasked with returning civilians to power.
Chronology of the coup in Mali
The decision to proclaim Goita as head of state came after the junta arrested President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, civil guarantors of the transition started after the coup. Colonel Assimi Goita announced a day later that he dismissed Bah Ndaw and Moctar Ouane.
Their dismissal was then presented as a resignation, with no information as to whether it was voluntary.
The African country was then engulfed in a wave of turmoil due to the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel and the junta’s demands that foreign forces providing security and fighting the jihadists withdraw from national territory.
The UN Security Council announced in early July that it had decided to end its peacekeeping mission in Mali, after France and Germany earlier said they were withdrawing their troops from Mali at the request of the military junta.
The last French soldiers left Mali in August last year, while Germany’s withdrawal plan aims for the last soldiers from the African country to return home by May next year.
