Mali elections could be postponed, prime minister told AFP

The presidential and legislative elections scheduled for early next year in Mali could be postponed for several months, the Prime Minister told AFP on Sunday, stressing the need to ensure their credibility before taking place.

“The main thing for us is less to hold them on February 27 than to hold elections that will not be contested,” said Choguel Kokalla Maiga in an interview in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

He suggested they could be postponed for “two weeks, two months, a few months”, adding that a decision will be taken in October after a meeting of a national forum.

“At the end, we will issue a more detailed agenda,” Maiga said.

“It is better to organize peaceful elections, recognized by all, rather than to organize elections which will be contested,” added the Prime Minister.

The elections, promised for February 2022 by strongman Colonel Assimi Goita, aim to restore civilian rule following a coup in August last year against President-elect Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

The army then appointed an interim civilian government tasked with returning to democratic rule.

Malian. By (AFP)

But Goita overthrew the civilian leaders of the interim government in May – in a second coup – and was later declared president himself.

He pledged to meet the February deadline for civil elections set by the interim government, which also set October 31 as the date for a constitutional referendum.

Widespread insecurity in Mali, and the scale of the task, however, cast doubt on the timetable for reforms.

The violence-torn country was already grappling with a bloody jihadist conflict before sinking into political turmoil.

Sections of the vast nation are escaping government control due to a jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north in 2012, before spreading to the center of the country, as well as neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. .