March 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The constitutional referendum scheduled for March 19 by the military junta at the head of Mali has been temporarily postponed to better outline the development of the plebiscite, as explained this Friday by the spokesman for the Malian military government, Colonel Abdulaye Maiga, who hopes that the process it will not be significantly delayed.
Maiga has indicated that, with this delay, the referendum process aims to fully adhere to the recommendations formulated in 2021 by the so-called National Conference for the Refoundation of Mali, a forum organized by the military and its allies under the boycott of the opponents of the Army and criticism from the international community.
It was precisely at this conference that Malian military leaders decided to extend the so-called “transition period” by five years after their 2020 coup, an excessively long term in the opinion of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
A subsequent negotiation managed to reduce the term to 24 months in exchange for the withdrawal of the sanctions of the pan-African group on the Malian Junta.
Mali’s current leader is Colonel Assimi Goita, who led a coup against then-President Ibrahim Boubcar Keita in August 2020 and subsequently led a second coup in May 2021 against Mali’s transitional authorities — at which point who overthrew the president and prime minister, Bah Ndaw and Moctar Ouane–, to end up consolidating his rise to power.
In this Friday’s statement, picked up by Radio France International (RFI), the military government calls for calm about the transition process by “assuring national and international opinion that the return to constitutional order remains the main priority of the board”.
