Malians to vote on Sunday in parliamentary election delayed several times since 2018.

Malians go to the polls on Sunday for the long-delayed parliamentary election despite a security crisis, the recent kidnapping of a leading opposition politician and the coronavirus pandemic.

Experts see the vote as a key step towards leading the West African state out of its spiral of violence and closer to a political solution to stop the bloodshed.

The parliamentary election has been delayed several times since 2018, mostly over security concerns. But Mali’s government says it will go ahead on Sunday, even as the novel coronavirus has added to the country’s chronic security problems.

Coronavirus outbreak

Mali announced measures, including a night-time curfew, to stop the spread of the coronavirus after the country’s first case was reported earlier this week.

The country now has confirmed four cases of the virus which has infected more than 542,000 people worldwide and killed at least 24,000 people, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Unidentified gunmen also kidnapped leading opposition figure Soumaila Cisse on Wednesday in the volatile centre of the country, killing his bodyguard in the process.

In a televised address made before Cisse was reported missing, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said the election would go ahead “in scrupulous respect of protective measures”, referring to the health crisis.

The government decided to continue with the election after consulting with the heads of political parties, who argued in favour of maintaining the scheduled date.

Candidates for the 147-seat National Assembly can campaign until Friday, although their efforts are hamstrung by an anti-coronavirus measure banning gatherings of more than 50 people.

Despite the measure and the political posters that dot the capital, Bamako, there has been little visible enthusiasm for the election in the city.

Mali has been struggling to contain an armed uprising that erupted in the north in 2012, and which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians.

Despite the presence of thousands of French and UN troops, the conflict has since engulfed central Mali and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Holding the election was a key recommendation from crisis talks in December, which aimed at exploring non-military solutions to the country’s worsening violence.

The hope is that a new crop of MPs will adopt reforms agreed in a peace deal brokered between the government in Bamako and several armed groups in Algiers in 2015.

Among other things, the pact provides for decentralising governance in Mali, one of the demands of some rebel groups. But implementing the deal has stalled for years.

Striking judges

The current MPs were elected in 2013, in a ballot won by Keita’s Rally for Mali party. Another vote was meant to take place following Keita’s re-election in 2018, but it was delayed several times because of a strike by judges and insecurity.

“The situation is politically untenable,” Ibrahim Maiga, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies think-tank in Bamako, said, adding that there would be little progress in implementing the Algiers pact without an election.

He explained that many perceive the parliament as no longer reflecting Mali’s current political situation.

There are questions about the feasibility of holding the vote on Sunday, as attacks by armed groups are a daily occurrence in many parts of the country.

“Today, the situation is worse,” Maiga said, adding that holding the election on Sunday was “strikingly out of step” with current security and health worries.

The second round of voting is due on April 19.

Maiga said he thought money was the reason behind sticking to the date.

“This financial dimension is important … one can understand their reaction,” he said, referring to the request from political parties to maintain the vote.