A draft new Constitution in Mali plans to strengthen the powers of the president, allows him to order general mobilization in this country destabilized by violence, and relegates French to the rank of “working language”. The leader of the junta that took power by force in 2020, Colonel Assimi Goïta, received the project yesterday.
This Constitution is a key element of the vast reform project invoked by the military to justify their continued power. Its adoption would be an important step in the timetable leading to elections in February 2024 and a return of civilians to power.
In the calendar drawn up by the junta, this Constitution was supposed to be submitted to a referendum on March 19. But the doubt is great on the respect of this deadline, and Colonel Goïta said nothing on the subject. The project submitted to the colonel, who was made president in 2021 after a second putsch in less than a year, amends a preliminary draft disclosed in October 2022.
The President may again dissolve the Assembly
The document reinforces the presidential powers, like the preliminary draft of 2022, compared to the Constitution of 1992. In the new Constitution, it would be the president who “determines the policy of the Nation”, and no longer the government; the president would appoint the prime minister and ministers and end their functions.
“The government is responsible to the president”, and no longer to the National Assembly. The initiative for laws would belong to the president and parliamentarians, and no longer to the government and the National Assembly. Compared to the 2022 draft, the new draft restores the power of the president to dissolve the National Assembly.
The president would be elected for five years, and could serve no more than two terms. The new project introduces the possibility for the president to order general mobilization, applicable from the age of 18.
French as a “working language”
Mali has been plagued since 2012 by the spread of jihadism and violence of all kinds. The junta pushed French soldiers out in 2022 in a climate of great acrimony and turned militarily and politically towards Russia.
In the 2022 preliminary draft, as in 1992, French was “the official language of expression”, and the local languages were intended to become “official languages”. In the new project, “the national languages are the official languages of Mali” and “French is the working language”.
The project affirms that Mali is an “independent, sovereign, unitary, indivisible, democratic, secular and social republic”, while some voices had wanted to question the principle of secularism.