Bamako – Lawmakers named by Mali’s military junta have begun consultations on an election bill, an official said on Tuesday, although the key issue of when the vote will take place remains unsettled.
Mali is struggling under sanctions imposed by other countries in West Africa for perceived foot-dragging over restoring civilian rule following coups in 2020 and 2021.
The junta has announced a two-year transition, whereas the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is pushing for 16 months maximum.
An official at the National Transition Council (CNT), a legislative body controlled by the military, said lawmakers had begun talks on a draft law filed last December.
“We have begun (consultations) on the new election law. The CNT’s law commission will allow all the political and social strands in our country to express their opinion,” the commission’s chairman, Souleymane De, told AFP.
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“It’s after the (consultations), which could take up the rest of May, that… members will decide on the law, which will then be put to a plenary session for approval or rejection,” De said.
Several former senior government officials and civil servants have given testimony to the law commission since Friday, he said.
Mali has been struggling with a decade-long jihadist insurgency that has left thousands of civilians dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Anger at the mounting toll unleashed protests against the country’s elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, paving the way to a coup by disgruntled army officers in August 2020.
A second de-facto coup occurred in May 2021, when strongman Assimi Goita pushed out an interim civilian government and took over the presidency.
The violence gripping Mali since 2012 has involved attacks by jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group, but also an assortment of self-declared militias and bandits.
The nation’s armed forces have also been accused of abuses.
The violence that began in the north of Mali spread to the centre, then neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, all despite the deployment of UN, French and African troops.
Jihadists on Friday briefly kidnapped 32 women in the central Djenne region, while one group was collecting firewood and the other fishing, Mali’s minister for children, women and the family, Foune Coulibaly, told AFP.
Alerted to the abductions, traditional hunters went searching for them before trading fire with a group of jihadists who eventually released the women, the minister said.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Twitter / @PopulismUpdates
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