Mali’s proposed new constitution will shift the balance of executive power from the parliament towards the president. Junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita received a draft of the proposed constitution this week. The document, which is a key part of the military’s bid to retain power until 2024, has not been made public.

According to drafting commission chairman Professor Fousseyni Samaké, if the constitution is accepted, the president will determine the political line which the government will then turn into law.

The president will no longer have the right to dissolve parliament.

The text of the “preliminary draft constitution” arrived two months after it was originally due. Professor Samaké said the deadline had been extended.

Delivering the draft, Samaké warned Goita, “any constitution will be subject to challenges, criticism and controversy.”

Questioned by journalists, Samaké said that the draft document contained 195 articles. Mali’s first constitution after independence, in 1960, had 52 articles; the current basic law has 122.

No question of a federation

The most important element, apart from the shift towards a presidential regime, is the insistance of the constitution that Mali wil remain a unitary state, according to Professor Samaké. “There will be no federation, no regional autonomy,” he insisted.

Ethnic Tuaregs launched a campaign for independence or special status in northern Mali a decade ago.

Jihadists joined that rebellion, transforming it into the springboard for an Islamist insurgency that has since swept into neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

On the question of local languages, Fousseyni Samaké said the commission had tried to take “a dynamic approach to the problem of national and official languages”.

The professor offered no further details on the question, crucial in a country which continues to use French as the official language, and in which there are at least 13 local tongues, including Peul and Bambara.

Religion in a divided nation

Relations between the state and religion form another crucial and sensitive aspect of the draft constitution.

According to Fousseyni Samaké, one of the crucial efforts of his commission has been to define what exactly is meant by a secular state.

He stressed that religious leaders had been involved in discussions before the drafting stage, and that Mali will remain a secular nation in which which religious freedom is guaranteed.

The new constitution proposes the establishment of an upper house, or senate, as well as a government spending oversight body, the National Accounts Court. The High Court of Justice and the High Commission for Communities will both be abolished.

Malian authorities, dominated by the military which seized power in August 2020, cite the drafting of a new basic law as one of the reforms needed for the “refoundation” of the state.

They announced the commission in June after extending military rule until 2024, and have said the constitution will be put to a referendum in March 2023.

The military has pledged to hold elections in February 2024 and to hand over power in March of the same year.

Mali has suffered three coups since 1991 and five since independence in 1960.