Malians will go to the polls on Sunday to approve or not a new Constitution submitted by the transitional authorities to a referendum.
This vote is the first organized by the transitional authorities since the military came to power in August 2020. the Malian authorities.
Malians will thus decide on Sunday from 8:00 a.m. (local and GMT) on the constitutional project using green ballots for yes, red for no. Results are expected within 72 hours.
On Tuesday, the Head of State, Colonel Assimi Goïta, called on citizens to approve the draft Constitution by yes.
“I ask the Malians to come out massively on Sunday June 18 to give reason to the draft Constitution by voting yes”, he declared in an intervention in a stadium in Ségou (center).
“The draft Constitution was made by the Malians”, he said, noting that despite a number of oppositions, the text was “the result of consensual work of all sensitivities”.
“Even the Malians of the diaspora were involved, but no foreign person was associated with its drafting,” he observed.
Mali’s defense and security forces (FSD) voted on Sunday for the constitutional referendum, a week before the civilian vote.
The version presented as final of the Constitution, delivered on February 27 to the head of the transition, affirms the “attachment to the republican form and the secularism of the State”.
It strengthens the powers of the president, allows him to order general mobilization in this country and relegates French to the rank of “working language”, according to the final text.
In the new Constitution, “the government is responsible to the president”, and no longer to the National Assembly. The initiative for laws would belong to the president and parliamentarians, and no longer to the government and the National Assembly.
The president would be elected for five years and could serve no more than two terms, according to the draft Constitution.
The Economic Community of West African States lifted a set of trade and financial sanctions against Mali in July after the military government committed to a March 2024 handover.
The sanctions were imposed in January 2022 when the military government was considering remaining in power for up to five years.
The draft constitution significantly strengthens the power of the president. Under it, the president rather than the government appoints the prime minister and ministers and has the right to sack them as well as dissolve parliament.
Other sections of the draft have already triggered controversy.
A part of the draft states that Mali is an “independent, sovereign, unitary, indivisible, democratic, secular and social republic”. Imams, a powerful class in the country, have been contesting the principle of secularism and have called on Muslims to oppose it.
The draft also proclaims any coup as an “imprescriptible crime”. But those who carried out the 2020 coup and another one in 2021 to consolidate their hold on power would be safe since acts prior to the constitution going into effect would be covered by amnesty laws.
Mali is in the throes of an 11-year-old security crisis triggered by a regional revolt in the north that developed into a full-blown rebellion. Frustration that French troops, who had been in the country since 2013, could not root out the rebels led to rising anti-French sentiments.
That and military rule in the country led to soured relations with France, the country’s traditional ally and former coloniser, and closer ties with Russia.
