Malians have voted on Sunday on whether to back a new constitution in a first electoral test for the ruling junta.
The west African nation has been under military rule since an August 2020 coup but military leader Colonel Assimi Goita, 40, has vowed to return the country to civilian rule in 2024.
Mali has a population of around 21 million with some 8.4 million citizens eligible to vote in the referendum on the new constitution text. The referendum has fueled speculation that Goita might seek election.
But turnout was generally low and insecurity has prevented voting in some areas in the central and northern regions including the town of Kidal, a stronghold of former rebels.
In Menaka, a region in the north, voting was limited to its capital due to insecurity, local elected officials said.
Despite the concerns, no major incident was reported. The voting was generally peaceful, Mohammed, a resident of the capital Bamako told TRT Afrika.
New Mali
People started coming out ''slowly'' in the morning to cast their votes and later polls closed at 6pm local time, Mohammed says. ''The turnout was very low. There is an apathy due to certain problems,'' he adds.
The interim leader of Mali Assimi Goita was among the first to cast their ballots, while voters flocked to polling stations in the capital, Bamako, an AFP news agency journalist saw.
"Today is a historic day. This vote will change many things... That's why I voted,'' said civil servant Boulan Barro who supports the constitutional reforms because it will provide a ''new Mali.''
A team of observers from civil society groups backed by the European Union reported that there were only a small number of voting issues in the polling stations to which they were deployed.
Key issues
Provisional results are expected within 72 hours of the vote. Presidential elections are scheduled for February 2024.
The draft constitution includes updates that have been proposed in past failed efforts to revise the constitution that supporters hope will reinforce democracy and address divisions, including the creation of a second parliamentary chamber to boost representation from across Mali. This means Mali will have a lower parliament and a senate.
The proposed establishment of a separate court of auditors for state spending will bring Mali in line with a directive from the West African Economic and Monetary Union from 2000.
But some opposition parties, pro-democracy groups and campaigners for the 'No' vote say the non-democratically elected authorities such as the junta have no right to oversee such a substantial constitutional overhaul.
They also say the proposed constitution hands excessive authority to the president including over the legislative process.
Presidential powers
"I am for a revision of the constitution but not this referendum. The legitimacy of the actors, the process ...I think we could have done better," lawyer Fousseini Ag Yehia said in the capital Bamako on Saturday.
The junta has defended the referendum. "With this project, we are betting on the future of our state, the restoration of its authority, and the renewed trust between institutions and citizens," interim president Assimi Goita said in televised speech on Friday.
The new constitution will strengthen the role of the president, who will have the right to hire and fire the prime minister and cabinet members.
The government will answer to the president, and not parliament as the current 1992 document states.
It will also give an amnesty to those behind prior coups, reform the regulation of public finances and force MPs and senators to declare their wealth in a bid to clamp down on corruption.
Retrospect
The military junta has advertised the new constitution as the answer to Mali's inability to tackle its multiple crises.
Mali's recent woes began in 2012, when separatist insurgents in the north -- long seen as marginalised by the government - seized vast swathes of territory before security forces pushed them back. But armed groups linked to IS and al Qaeda continued to carry out attacks.
Disputed parliamentary elections in March 2020, followed by mass protests against a government unable to rein in the insurgency, corruption and economic crisis, ended in a coup.
Goita initially appointed an interim president Bah Ndaw but kicked him out in a second coup in 2021 and stepped into the top job himself.
The junta called on Friday for the immediate departure of the country's UN peacekeeping mission, a central and controversial actor in a security crisis that has claimed the lives of nearly 200 peacekeepers in the last decade, AFP news agency reports.
