Mali\u2019s military junta on Monday said it would postpone February elections for technical reasons, further pushing back a timeline for a return to democratic rule\u00a0after two coups. <\/p>\n
Mali had been expected to hold the first round of the vote on Feb. 4, 2024, and a second round two weeks later, which was already a\u00a0two-year delay\u00a0to a timetable originally agreed by the West African country\u2019s interim authorities. <\/p>\n
The junta\u2019s statement said the delay would be small and was due to several factors including a dispute with a French firm over a civil registry database. It said it would give a new timeline at a later date. <\/p>\n
It accused the French-based international tech company IDEMIA, which provided a civil identification system known as RAVEC to the former government, of holding its database \u201chostage\u201d since March due to unpaid bills. <\/p>\n
The situation makes it impossible to register newly eligible voters and update the voter registry, and is slowing down the roll out of a new biometric identity card, the junta said. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for IDEMIA said the company has no contract with Mali\u2019s interim authorities and confirmed that its service had been shut down because of outstanding invoices. <\/p>\n
The junta said it would migrate its current civil identification data to a new system \u201cexclusively under Malian control.\u201d <\/p>\n
West Africa\u2019s main political and economic body ECOWAS has not yet commented on the announcement. <\/p>\n
The bloc has been leading tense negotiations with Mali and other coup-hit West African nations to restore democratic rule within acceptable timelines. <\/p>\n\n
Mali\u2019s military junta on Monday said it would postpone February elections for technical reasons, further pushing back a timeline for a return to democratic rule\u00a0after two coups. Mali had been expected to hold the first round of the vote on Feb. 4, 2024, and a second round two weeks later, which was already a\u00a0two-year delay\u00a0to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}