Pressure Mounts on Mali’s Military Junta to Cede Power
West African Leaders Agree to Lift Mali Sanctions After Talks
West African leaders ratcheted up pressure on Mali’s military junta to hand over power to civilian leaders, pledging to immediately lift sanctions against the country when it did.
A civilian leadership should be named to lead the transition “within days,” Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who currently heads the Economic Community of West African States, told reporters in Accra Tuesday. “The minute the transitional government is put in place, the sanctions Ecowas has put on Mali will be lifted,” he said after a meeting with Mali’s military leaders in Ghana’s capital.
The 15-nation regional bloc has taken a hard line against Mali since President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was deposed in an Aug. 18 putsch, shutting its borders and halting financial flows.
“We’re concerned about the impact of the sanctions on the people of Mali,” said Akufo-Addo. Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan will head to Mali in a week to follow up on progress made toward the transition plan, he said.
The transitional government should lead the country for a maximum of 18 months, Akufo-Addo said. A spokesman for the junta, which had previously proposed a political charter that could see a military officer head a transitional government for 18 months, couldn’t immediately comment when reached by phone.
Ecowas has led mediation efforts with the junta, saying the era of coup d’etats is over in Africa. Keita, 75, dissolved his government and resigned under pressure from soldiers who detained him hours after staging a mutiny. The deposed leader was first elected to office in 2013, just over a year after his predecessor, Amadou Toumani Toure, was himself ousted in a putsch.
The junta has leveraged the support it garnered among Malians to push back against a swift return to civilian rule. Its recent fallout with an influential coalition of civil society and opposition groups shows that support is ebbing.
The so-called M5-RPF coalition, which had led mass protests calling for Keita to resign, lent credibility to talks organized by the junta to prepare a transition plan for Ecowas.
“The M5-RFP is sad to note the opacity with which reports have been handled” and the junta’s refusal to debate its transition proposal, Ibrahim Ikassa, a university lecturer and spokesman for the group, told journalists earlier Tuesday.
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