Nine days before the scheduled date, the ruling military group in Mali postponed the constitutional referendum scheduled for March 19 without a new date, and with this delay, the army exceeded the first deadline for consultations that it itself had set and envisaged. to hold elections in February 2024 with a view to returning civilians to their homes. Power. Colonel Asimi Guetta, head of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, leads the military council that seized power from former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in the 2020 coup and then came to power from Bah Ndav after the 2021 Mali coup and he has since been constitutionally declared President of Mali. On June 7, 2021, he was sworn in as interim president of the country.
Guetta served as a colonel in a separate special forces battalion, a special forces unit of the armed forces, was trained in the US, France and Germany and has experience with US special forces.