The Mali military junta has on Monday announced a shift of the presidential election slated to be held in February 2024.
Naija News gathered that the military government blamed the postponement on technical reasons, citing a problem with updating the electoral roll and a census database.
According to AFP, a government spokesperson, Abdoulaye Maiga, on Monday said the postponement was due to “technical reasons”, adding that “those reasons include issues linked to the adoption this year of a new constitution and a review of the electoral lists.”
Also, the government spokesperson cited a dispute with the French company Idemia, which is involved in the census process, adding that authorities are also refusing to organize legislative elections, initially scheduled for the end of 2023, before the presidential election.
Maiga further stated, “The new dates for the presidential election will be communicated later.”
The junta “has decided to organise, exclusively, the presidential election”, the statement added.
Other elections will be held on a schedule “established by the new authorities, under the directives of the new president.”
The junta led by led by Assimi Goita, who took power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, earlier pledged to hold legislative elections in February 2022.
They had failed to meet the timetable agreed upon with the ECOWAS, saying they needed more time for deep reforms.
Monday’s statement made no mention of recent security developments, saying only that junta leader Goita intends “to return to a peaceful and secure constitutional order, after carrying out as a priority institutional political reforms.”
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