The junta in power in Mali since 2020 announced on Monday the postponement of the presidential election scheduled for February 2024, once again postponing the return of civilians to the head of this country in the grip of jihadism and a deep multidimensional crisis.
This is a further postponement on the part of the colonels in relation to the commitments made under pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
The dates initially set for February 4 and 18, 2024 for the two rounds “will be slightly postponed for technical reasons,” said government spokesperson Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga in a statement read in Bamako. New dates will be communicated “later”, he said.
The authorities cite factors linked to the adoption in June of a new Constitution and the revision of the electoral lists, but also a dispute with a French company, Idemia, involved according to them in the census process.
The government is also giving up organizing legislative elections originally planned for the end of 2023. It is leaving it to future authorities to establish a new calendar, he says.
Postponed since February 2022
Authors of successive coups d’état in August 2020 and May 2021, the military first committed to giving way to elected civilians after presidential and legislative elections scheduled for February 2022.
But the junta led by Colonel Assimi Goïta announced at the end of 2021 that it was unable to respect the timetable agreed with ECOWAS. She had even considered staying for up to five more years.
ECOWAS then imposed heavy trade and financial sanctions at the beginning of 2022 which had hit Mali, a poor and landlocked country, hard. She lifted them the following July when the colonels agreed to leave in March 2024, and announced an electoral calendar setting the presidential election for February 2024.
The postponement of the presidential election is an additional challenge for ECOWAS.
The organization of 15 member countries, which proclaims a principle of “zero tolerance” for coups d’état, has been confronted since the first putsch in Bamako with a succession of coups, in Burkina Faso and Niger neighboring Mali and won by jihadist expansion, but also in Guinea.
In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, the military undertook under West African pressure to hand over orders to elected civilians at the end of so-called “transition” periods of 24 months or more, during which they would lead the reforms made essential in their eyes by the situation in their country.
“Neutralized” international organizations
In Niger, the last country shaken by a putsch, in July 2023, the regime promised a transition of maximum three years, without clearly mentioning a date for possible elections.
ECOWAS took severe retaliatory measures to force the Nigerien military to reinstate deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, and even threatened military intervention. Almost two months later, this threat has so far remained a dead letter.
ECOWAS has not reacted publicly to the postponement of the Malian presidential election.
The Senegalese President, Macky Sall, whose country is a member of ECOWAS, recognized in an interview last week that “transitions” supposedly limited in time had a tendency to become “unlimited”. With the spread of jihadism and the international context, “our organizations are neutralized like the UN is neutralized in major crises,” he admitted.
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop attacked “these organizations [qui] are thus transformed into instruments of perpetuation and imposition of a neocolonial and hegemonic order”, in a clear reference to ECOWAS.
Outbreak of violence
The Malian presidential election is postponed while the country remains prey to violence in the center and east, and faces a resumption of hostilities by separatist groups and an intensification of jihadist activities in the north.
The junta pushed the French anti-jihadist force out in 2022 and did the same for the UN mission in 2023. It turned politically and militarily towards Russia and reestablished sovereignty over the entire of the territory one of its mantras. It ensures that the security trend is reversed.
A recent report published by the NGO Acled, which lists the victims of conflicts around the world, says on the contrary that the violence against civilians, attributable to jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the armed organization Islamic State, but also to the Malian armed forces and their allies in the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, have increased by 38% this year.
The government press release does not refer to recent security developments.