Mali Military Junta Estimates February 2024 Elections Will Be Postponed

Illustration of the Mali army. (Wikimedia Commons/Magharebia)

JAKARTA - The Dead military junta on Monday announced the possibility of postponing the elections originally planned to be held next February for technical reasons, then pushed back the deadline for returning to democratic government after two coups.

Mali was originally expected to hold its first round of voting on February 4, 2024, and the second round two weeks later. This is in line with a two-year delay from the original schedule approved by the West African country's interim authorities.

The junta's statement said the delay was only small-scale and caused by several factors, including a dispute with a French company over the civil registration database, with a new timeline to be announced later, reported Reuters, September 26.

The junta accused France-based international technology company IDEMIA, which provided the former government with a civil identification system known as RAVEC, of ​​holding its database hostage since March over unpaid bills.

The situation makes it impossible to register new eligible voters and update voter lists, and slows down the rollout of new biometric identity cards, the junta said.

Meanwhile, an IDEMIA spokesperson said the company had no contract with Mali's interim government, confirming that its services had been shut down due to unpaid bills.

Relatedly, Mali's military junta said it would move existing civilian identification data to a new system "exclusively under Malian control."

Separately, West Africa's political and economic body, ECOWAS, has not commented on the Malian military junta's announcement.

It is known that the bloc has led tense negotiations between Mali and other West African countries hit by the coup, to restore democratic government within an acceptable timeframe.