Last week's decision by Mali's government to postpone regional and municipal council elections, amid concerns over security, sends a bad signal for the prospect of long-term stability in the West African country, analysts say.
The territorial, administrative and municipal council elections, planned for December 17, were postponed to April 2018 to give the government "more time to organise absolutely inclusive elections", Tieman Hubert Coulibaly, Mali's minister of territorial administration, said in a statement last Sunday. [...]
But Marie-Joelle Zahar, a professor at the Universite de Montreal and co-author of a recent report on peacebuilding in Mali, said that holding the elections would have been the clearest indication that the state can implement the 2015 peace agreement, aimed at bringing stability and security to the conflict-ridden north. [...]
The government signed the transitional agreement with two separate coalitions of opposition groups: the Coordination of Azawad Movements, composed largely of armed groups from northern Mali, and the Platform, which includes Touareg and Arab movements. [...]
An armed uprising in northern Mali in 2012 displaced tens of thousands of people, and the area was gripped by instability as armed opposition movements clashed with state forces and pushed them out of several areas.
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