The 1992 Malian Parliamentary Elections were the first democratic elections to the National Assembly of Mali (L'assemblée nationale du Mali) following the collapse of President Moussa Traoré's military government. They were held in two rounds on 23 February 1992 and 8 March 1992.[1]
In March 1991, the Comité Transitoire de Salut du Peuple (CTSP) was created to manage the democratic transition.[1] This body established a transitional government headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré, the leader of the military group responsible for overthrowing the Traoré regime.[1] The transitional government oversaw the constitutional referendum on 12 January 1992, the municipal elections on 19 January 1992, the legislative elections on 23 February 1992 and 8 March 1992, and the presidential elections on 12 April 1992 and 26 April 1992.[2]
In the National Assembly, domestic voters went to the ballots to elect 116 deputy positions while another 13 positions were reserved for Malian voters living abroad.[3] Voter participation in this election was not particularly strong. The first round saw 22.31% voter participation and the second round saw only 20.50%.[1]
The Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali - Parti Pan-Africain pour la Liberté (ADEMA-PASJ or ADEMA) won 76 of the 116 available seats.[1] This absolute majority paved the way for the party leader, Alpha Oumar Konaré to become the first democratically elected President of Mali in the same year.
Background
editProtests Against Moussa Traoré
editThroughout Moussa Traoré's reign as President of Mali, his military dictatorship was never reluctant to use force to maintain their power.[4] Nevertheless, his regime was ultimately unsuccessful at rooting out opposition movements in the trade unions and educational communities.[1] The 1970s were marked with several significant student uprisings, the most prominent of which, the third congress of the Union Nationale des Etudiants et des Elèves du Mali, led to the assassination of the twenty-four-year-old activist Abdoul Karim Camara.[1] However, the regime maintained strong control throughout the 1980s and largely prevented opposition movements from organizing.[1] In 1990, as Traoré's government faced humiliation from their defeat to the Tuareg rebels in northern Mali, the opposition groups increased their pressure against the military dictatorship.[5] That year, several pro-democracy groups such as the Jeunesse pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (AJDP), the Comité National d'Initiative Démocratique (CNID), and the Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali (ADEMA) formed and began holding protests and demonstrations.[1]
By 1991, the Malian pro-democracy movement was operating at full force, spearheaded by student-led peaceful protests.[4] In January, l'Union nationale des travailleurs maliens (UNTM) declared a general strike nationwide.[4] In March, in response to the building pressure from the protest movements and the Tuareg insurgencies, Traoré's government violently subdued their opposition.[6] On 22 March, the military opened fire on a peaceful student demonstration in Bamako, killing hundreds and causing five days of riots as hundreds of thousands of Malians took to the streets to oppose their government.[1][6][7]
Coup d'État
editOn 26 March, a military squadron led by Lt. Col. Amadou Toumani Touré arrested Traoré, thus ending his dictatorship.[5][6] Touré, in response to continued pro-democracy protests following the coup, brought together civilian and military leaders to form the Comité Transitoire de Salut du Peuple (CTSP) to manage the transition from authoritarianism.[1][6] This group consisted of ten representatives from the armed and security forces, fifteen representatives from the Comité de Coordination des Associations et des Organisations Démocratiques (CCAOD), which gave spaces to youth movement leaders and members of the armed resistance against Traoré.[1] Following a period of negotiations, the CTSP declared a transitional government led by Touré with the aim of preparing the country for democratic elections in the following year.[5]
National Conference
editA National Conference was set for 29 July 1991 until 12 August 1991 where election procedures would be defined, an election calendar would be installed, and a new constitution based on human rights would be deliberated.[1] Those who attended the conference were from diverse areas of the country and represented all ends of the socioeconomic and professional spectra.[5] In total, there were an estimated 2,000 people that participated in the conference's discussions on education, healthcare, and judicial and electoral reforms.[7] Due to its importance to Malian political tradition, dialogue was a particular focus of this conference.[7] This focus was clear as deliberations on reform were held from local to national levels and several opportunities were given to civilians to directly questions their political representatives.[7]
Election Process
editMali's first democratic elections used an intense electoral process that demanded a great deal from the voters. Malians were summoned to the ballot box six times in 1992 - on 12 January for a constitutional referendum, on 19 January for municipal elections, on 23 February and 8 March for legislative elections, and on 12 April and 26 April for the presidential elections.[4] Several initiatives devised by the CTSP were used in the 1992 elections.[4] For example, the elections were organized by a secretariat created by the CTSP in August 1991 and a commission guaranteeing fair access to state media facilitated candidates in delivering their platforms on television and radio broadcasts.[4]
The election was also overseen by around forty foreign observers who issued a joint declaration that the Malian elections were fair and transparent.[1] Although this review is encouraging, local press coverage indicates that this group may not have played a strong role in the election oversight process.[1] Malian journalists were much more concerned with the exorbitant costs of the election process that forced Mali to rely heavily on foreign financial aid.[1]
Political Parties
editAt the time of the 1992 legislative elections, there were 48 official political parties in Mali as multiparty politics were legalized under Ordinance 2 of the Comité Transitoire de Salut du Peuple (CTSP).[1] In the first round of the legislative elections, 22 of these participated while in the second round, only 9 participated.[4] The first National Assembly body was made up of 10 official parties.[4]
The dominant party in this election was the Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali - Parti Pan-Africain pour la Liberté (ADEMA-PASJ or ADEMA), which was the political arm of the ADEMA Association.[1] This party first formed in 1990 as one of the first democratic political associations that publicly opposed the Traoré regime.[4] They marketed themselves as a center-left party with socialist tendencies.[8] Its commitment to social-democratic values largely comes from its members' strong ties with former President Modibo Keïta, who first established Mali as a one-party socialist state in 1960.[8] During the election, the face of the party was then-candidate Alpha Oumar Konaré, a former professor of history and pro-democracy advocate.[9] Critical to his appeal was his "man of the people" charisma and his role on the front lines of the pro-democracy protest.[10] The party's success was due in large part to Konaré's united base of educators, students, and medical professionals.[11]
The next most successful parties in the legislative elections were the Comité Nationale d'Initiative Démocratique (CNID) and l'Union Soudanaise-Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (US-RDA).[1] CNID was founded as a pro-democracy organization in 1990 and became a political party the next year.[12] The party's base of young, urban political activists were significant during the protests that led to the downfall of the Traoré government.[12] However, unlike their compatriots from ADEMA-PASJ, CNID members were largely educated abroad and were not part of the group of dissidents imprisoned by Traoré.[12] Although they enjoyed a strong second-place performance in the 1992 legislative elections, their presidential candidate and party leader, Mountaga Tall, only finished third in his race.[1] This is mostly because support for CNID, while present nationwide, was concentrated mostly in Tall's home region Ségou.[12] The third-placing party, US-RDA, was already an established force by the 1992 elections, having been founded in 1946 and reigning as the single party in Mali during the Keïta presidency.[12] This party, similar to ADEMA-PASJ, had strong socialist tendencies and were therefore their main competition to win the "core" Malian voter.[12] Although their presidential candidate, Tiéloulé Konaté, finished his campaign in second place, US-RDA only placed third in the legislative elections.[1]
Results
editThe election results demonstrated that only three parties, ADEMA-PASJ, CNID, and US-RDA, were able to build strong voting coalitions nationwide.[1] Municipal election results were much more balanced, however, the smaller failed to bring these results to the National Assembly elections.[1]
In total, 116 seats in the National Assembly were chosen by domestic voters, of which 76 were filled by ADEMA-PASJ candidates.[1] Furthermore, another 13 seats were filled by voters living abroad.[3]
Legacy
editMali has typically received praise for its successful democratic transition in 1992.[7] Due to its relatively early transition compared to others in the region, Mali was seen by many as the model for democracy in Africa.[7] However, the reality of Malian politics following the 1992 elections show that this view of the Malian transition may be overly optimistic.[13] Voter participation in this election was extremely weak as the first round saw 22.31% participation and the second round only saw 20.50%.[1] While voting was difficult for those in the north due to the Tuareg insurgencies, voter disaffection was clear and several groups boycotted the election.[1] This pattern sustained itself as subsequent elections also saw low turnout and significant boycotts.[13] Specifically, the voters were concerned about the corruption of public officials, and this election did little to remedy these feelings.[1] Following the elections, the Malian people generally felt deceived as resentment towards the opportunistic and self-serving political class was high.[1] Furthermore, accusations of voting fraud and illegal financing persisted throughout this election cycle.[10] Tiéloulé Konaté of US-RDA was primarily accusing Konaré and ADEMA-PASJ of buying votes, giving preference to voting stations in districts where they have strong support, and increasing identification requirements for Malian voters in Côte d'Ivoire.[10] This combined, with displeasure over the foreign financing of Malian elections led to a boycott of the 1997 elections which saw ADEMA maintain power essentially unopposed.[10][13]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Lange, M.-F. (2000), Abbink, Jon; Hesseling, Gerti (eds.), "Elections in Mali (1992–7): Civil Society Confronted with the Rule of Democracy", Election Observation and Democratization in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 228–254, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-62328-0_11, ISBN 978-1-349-62328-0, retrieved 2020-03-27
- ^ Page, Willie (2004). Encyclopedia of African History. New York: Routledge. p. 932. ISBN 978-1579582456.
- ^ a b "Mali: ELECTIONS HELD IN 1992". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b c d e f g h i Lange, Marie-France (1999). "Insoumission civile et défaillance étatique : les contradictions du processus démocratique malien" (PDF). Autrepart. 10: 117–134 – via Horizon.
- ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference
:5was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b c d Smith, Zeric Kay (2001-07-01). "Francophone Africa in Flux: Mali's Decade of Democracy". Journal of Democracy. 12 (3): 73–79. doi:10.1353/jod.2001.0057. ISSN 1086-3214.
- ^ a b c d e f Wing, Susanna (July 2013). "BRIEFING: Mali: Politics of a Crisis". African Affairs. 112: 476–485 – via JSTOR.
- ^ a b UK, Peter Lamb, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Staffordshire University (2015-12-17). Historical Dictionary of Socialism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-5827-3.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Bleck, Jamie (2011). "Countries at the Crossroads 2011: Mali" (PDF). Freedom House.
- ^ a b c d Boyer, Allison (July 1992). "An Exemplary Transition". Africa Report. 37: 40–42.
- ^ Bingen, James; Robinson, David; Staatz, John (2001). Democracy and Development in Mali. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. p. 247. ISBN 978-0870135606.
- ^ a b c d e f Vengroff, Richard; Kone, Moctar (1995). "Mali: democracy and political change". In Wiseman, John (ed.). Democracy and Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Routledge. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-0415113021.
- ^ a b c Sears, Jonathan (September 2013). "Seeking sustainable legitimacy: Existential challenges for Mali". International Journal. 68: 444–453 – via JSTOR.