Published on : 26/05/2021 – 05:10
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The UN Security Council is due to meet on Wednesday about the crisis situation in Mali, while the ECOWAS mediator said he would meet with the transitional president and his prime minister.
Diplomats will be hard at work Wednesday, May 26, from Bamako to New York, to try to stem a new major political crisis triggered in Mali by the arrest of the president and the Prime Minister of the transition.
The strong man of Malian power, Colonel Assimi Goïta, said on Tuesday that he had dismissed President Bah Ndaw and his Prime Minister, Moctar Ouane, in what amounts to a second putsch in nine months, arousing widespread international condemnation and the threat of first sanctions.
The mediator of ECOWAS, the West African regional organization, Goodluck Jonathan, who arrived in the Malian capital on Tuesday, “obtained the green light to meet the transitional president and his prime minister on Wednesday,” told AFP a source close to the mediation after a meeting with Colonel Goïta.
“We are here to help our Malian brothers find a solution to the crisis, but it is clear that ECOWAS could quickly, at a forthcoming summit, announce sanctions,” a member of the delegation told AFP. , depending on who other meetings with the colonels are scheduled.
“We have explained the reasons for the sidelining of the transitional president and his Prime Minister,” for his part explained a member of Colonel Goïta’s cabinet.
Security Council meets
France and other countries like Niger and Tunisia have also obtained an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to be held on Wednesday at 19:00 GMT, AFP learned from diplomatic sources at New York.
The arrest on Monday of the two leaders and several senior figures of the State in this country crucial for the stability of the Sahel, plagued by jihadist spread, has provoked a multitude of condemnations against the military.
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is hiring more than 5,000 soldiers against the jihadists in the Sahel, spoke of “a coup d’etat in the unacceptable coup”.
Assimi Goïta and other Malian colonels had already overthrown President-elect Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on August 18, 2020 before installing transitional authorities that remained under their control.
The leaders of the European Union are “ready, in the coming hours, if the situation is not clarified, to take targeted sanctions” against the protagonists, affirmed Emmanuel Macron after a European summit.
Calls for the immediate release of those arrested and a return to the political transition to bring civilians back to power have followed one after the other from the UN mission in Mali (Minusma), from the Community of West African States. (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU), the United States, the United Kingdom and even Germany.
Elections “in the course of 2022”
The events also raise questions about the respect of the timetable for the return of civilians to power. The transitional authorities had announced the organization in February-March 2022 of presidential and legislative elections. Colonel Goïta, more vague, says that the elections will be held “in the course of 2022”.
Although predictable, this umpteenth jolt plunged the Malians into consternation. Despite the proliferation of the hashtag #wuli (“standing” in Bambara) on social networks, calls to gather in Bamako to protest have hardly found an echo.
The sociologist Bréma Ely Dicko saw in these events the prolongation of the putsch of 2020. “What we are going through today is a logical consequence of the defects of the beginning of the transition”, when the colonels insisted on the dismiss the parties and civil society organizations that had led the protest against the old power for months, he said.
The main Malian union announced Tuesday to suspend the strike launched this week, so as not to aggravate the political crisis.
With AFP
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