Mali transitional government sets presidential, parliamentary elections for February 2022

Mali’s transitional government has announced that presidential and legislative elections will take place next February, saying it was honouring the timetable it promised to the international community after taking power months after a military coup last year.

Lieutenant Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the minister of Territorial Administration, told reporters on Thursday  that the first round of voting will take place on February 27, 2022. A second round will follow in March.

It would be recalled that on August 18, 2020 young military officers overthrew the country’s elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, after a wave of protests against his handling of Mali’s conflict and the country’s economic malaise.

Faced with threat of international sanctions, the officers handed power to a caretaker government between September and October 2020, which promised to conduct elections and hand over within 18 months.

Although the military government was officially disbanded in January, the army had retained a tight grip on the interim government. The pledge of an 18-month transition had spurred many doubts as to whether the military-dominated government had the will, or the ability, to stage elections on such a timescale.

Maiga said a referendum on a long-promised overhaul of the constitution will take place on October 31, 2021, with local and regional elections scheduled to take place on December 26.

The date for the plebiscite “takes into account the necessary time to carry out consultations, to draw up the draft constitution, to have it adopted by the National Transition Council (CNT) and finally have it adopted by referendum”, he added. The CNT is Mali’s post-coup legislative body.