Protests up ante on embattled Mali president

Pulse News Agency International by AFP

June 18, 2020 4:12 PM

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on Friday faces a mass protest calling on him to resign, reflecting mounting frustration with his leadership of the war-torn country.

Sounds of protest: Demonstrators in Bamako's Independence Square on June 5

The 75-year-old is under pressure over failures to roll back a jihadist insurgency that emerged in northern Mali in 2012 and spread to the country's fragile centre.

But the sclerotic pace of political reform, a flagging economy and a widely-shared perception of government corruption have also added to Keita's woes.

On Friday, a newly-energised opposition will hike demands for Keita to bring the curtain down on his nearly seven-year tenure.

"Have things changed since he arrived in power? No," said Boubacar Traore, a law student who said he would attend the protest in the capital Bamako.

"The country is ruined, there is too much corruption," he said.

The rally follows several anti-government protests this year in the poor Sahel nation of some 19 million people. The most recent, on June 5, drew tens of thousands of people in Bamako.

Daouda Kone, a forest planner, said fresh protests might push the government into action.

"Even if our demands are not met, at least we will have laid out our intentions," he said.

As pressure mounts, Keita is struggling to find space to carry though bold political reforms that experts argue are crucial to breaking Mali's cycle of violence.

Despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in Mali, jihadist attacks have continued apace, and ethnic killings are routine.

In the latest bloodshed, on Sunday, militants ambushed and killed 27 soldiers in the volatile centre of the country.

Reform efforts

Keita was elected president in 2013 and won a second five-year term in 2018.

His time in office has been marked by the mounting jihadist insurgency and haltingly slow peace talks with former rebels.

Despite this, his government has recognised the need for a new tack.

In February, Keita reversed longstanding policy and said he was willing to talk to jihadist groups -- an option that experts had long argued was necessary to defusing the violence.

And in response to the Bamako protest on June 5, the president on Tuesday also announced his intention to form a new unity government, which would apparently include opposition figures.

But, four months on, there has been no indication of any dialogue with the jihadists, and Keita's vision of a unity government is clouded by a poor record of engaging the opposition.

In December, senior opposition leaders boycotted a so-called "national inclusive dialogue" meant to find a political solution to Mali's crisis.

And in May, opposition supporters demonstrated over the results of March's long-delayed parliamentary elections -- which his party won.

Even so, anti-Keita sentiment in Mali is not uniform, however, and some support the president's proposals.

"Everyone must sit down with the president and we must form a government of national unity with those who are dissatisfied," said Cheick Abou Haidara, a retired security official.

"The problem in this country is that everybody's got an issue with each other, and it's got to stop or we're going to end up shooting each other," he added.

Fatima Bolly, who works in communications, agreed, explaining that the priority of all political actors had to be to fight insecurity.

"We've been at war for eight years. Everybody's sick of it," she said.

ah/eml/ri

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President Keita, in a visit to a military camp in Gao, central Mali. The armed forces, poorly-equipped and trained, are struggling against a ruthless jihadist insurgency AFP

Pulse News Agency International by AFP