Malians vote on Sunday in a referendum on a draft new Constitution, the first test vote since the advent of the junta three years ago, but fear of jihadist attacks and political disagreements prevented it from being held in several localities. , especially in the north.
About 8.4 million Malians were called upon to say yes or no to the text submitted to them by the junta and which strengthens the powers of the president, but which is contested by a heterogeneous opposition, in particular influential religious organizations hostile to the maintenance of the principle of secularism in the state.
Voters went in large numbers to the polling stations in Bamako, noted an AFP correspondent. Junta leader Colonel Assimi Goïta was among the first to vote.
But reports from the rest of this vast country indicate that, as expected, armed groups from the north blocked the consultation in the strategic city of Kidal. Other localities remained without polling stations due to insecurity.
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 refounded Mali, ”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, which is 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.
Offices close at 6:00 p.m. local time. Results are expected within 72 hours.
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 scale 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.
Participation was difficult to assess in the middle of the afternoon in the absence of official communication.
No major security incident was reported. A consortium of national civil society observers, MODELE, supported by the European Union, reported in a press release only a small proportion of dysfunctions in the offices where it was deployed.
But she did not comment on the localities in which the vote did not take place, except that she “observed the non-holding of the ballot in the Kidal 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.
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 ten years of presence. The authorities believe that the mission has failed and that Mali can assume its security by its “own means”.
The 1992 Constitution is readily referred to as a factor in the failure of the State in the face of the multitude of challenges: jihadist propagation, poverty, ruin of infrastructure or dilapidation of schools.
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.
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.