Fear of the coronavirus and the jihadist threat: Malian voters went to the polls in sparse order Sunday to elect their deputies in legislative elections, however with high stakes.
No official participation figure was available shortly before the closing of the polling stations at 6:00 p.m. (GMT and local), but the findings of AFP correspondents and observers suggest that it will be low.
At midday, it was 7.5% in the offices visited by the thousand observers from a group of civil society associations, according to a press release.
The first trends are not expected for several days.
Postponed several times for two years, these elections are expected to renew the 147 seats of Parliament in two rounds, this Sunday and April 19.
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Another stake was simply that the ballot could be held in large parts of the territory plagued by almost daily violence, which has spilled over the past few years into neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.
Of the nearly 12,500 polling stations, 274 were unable to open, according to the Ministry of Security and Civil Protection.
In Mopti (center), in the heart of a region particularly affected by jihadist attacks and deadly conflicts between communities, there was "not really a crowd," said the president of a polling station, Amadou Dicko. "The coronavirus and insecurity chased the voters."
In Timbuktu (north), the voting centers were secured by the Malian army, according to an AFP correspondent. An office president was, however, "kidnapped by armed men," said a source close to the region's governorate.
The mandate of the assembly resulting from the elections of 2013, which had granted a substantial majority to president Keïta, was to end in 2018.
The challenges of its renewal are important, according to experts, for whom it is a question of finally advancing the application of the Algiers peace agreement.
This agreement was signed in 2015 between the authorities and the independence armed groups, notably the Tuareg, which had taken up arms in 2012. It does not concern the jihadist groups. But its implementation is considered to be an essential factor in ending the crisis, alongside military action.
It provides for more decentralization via a constitutional reform. Some opponents believe that the reform cannot be adopted by the current Assembly because it is considered by many to be "legal but more legitimate", according to Bréma Ely Dicko, sociologist at the University of Bamako.
bur-sd-kt-ah / siu / jpc