Mali’s transitional government on Friday said it has decided to postpone a constitutional referendum that was scheduled to take place on March 19, reported Africa News.
The military leaders currently running the West African country pledged to hold presidential elections in February 2024 following international pressure to adopt an acceptable democratic transition timeline.
The March 19 referendum on a new constitution is the first step supposed to be validated by the vote paving way to February 2024 and a return to civilian rule.
But the authorities on Friday said the referendum has been delayed for a while.
“The date of the referendum scheduled for March 19, 2023 (…) will be slightly postponed,” government spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga said in a statement read to the press.
In a statement, Mali’s military junta justified the postponement saying that they needed more time to get the electoral management authority up and running in all of the country’s 19 administrative regions.
“The government reassures national and international opinion that the return to constitutional order… remains one of its top priorities,” the statement said.
The statement, however, did not mention a new referendum date.
The main West African economic and political bloc ECOWAS imposed tough sanctions on Mali in January 2022, after the transitional authorities rejected to follow a previously agreed electoral calendar.
After several rounds of negotiation talks with Mali’s military rulers, ECOWAS accepted a new 24-month transition that was to begin in March 2022. It lifted sanctions in July but kept Mali suspended from the bloc.
Mali has witnessed two coups since August 2020, mainly due to the failure of authorities to block a violent Islamist insurgency that has spread through West Africa over the past decade.
Military leaders have previously blamed election delays on insecurity, saying it made it difficult to organize elections.
