Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar fired Keita late on Tuesday, hours after Muslim soldiers chased him out of his home after months of massive protests against alleged corruption and strengthening security in the West African country.
Speaking on national broadcaster ORTM just before midnight, a grieving Keita said his dismissal – three years before his final term was coming to an end – was effective immediately. He also declared the dissolution of his government and the National Assembly.
“If today certain elements of our armies want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?” Keita said in a brief address of a military base in Kati outside the capital Bamako, where he was detained earlier in the day.
“I wish there was no bloodshed to keep me in power,” he said. “I have decided to leave office.”
It was not immediately clear who led the uprising, who would rule in Keita’s absence or what the mutineers wanted.
Images previously posted on social media were said to have been taken at the Kati garrison showing Keita and his Prime Minister Boubou Cisse surrounded by armed soldiers.
The M5-RFP coalition behind the protests signaled support for the mutiners’ action on Tuesday, with spokesman Nouhoum Togo telling Reuters news agency that it was “not a military coup but a popular uprising.”
Dispute Elections
The news of Keita’s capture was alarmed by the United Nations, the former colonial power France and elsewhere in the international community. But in the capital, anti-government protesters who first took to the streets in June to demand Keita’s dismissal cheered on the actions of the soldiers.
“All Malian people are tired – we have had enough,” said one protester.
The political upheaval erupted months after controversial legislative elections, and came as support for Keita tumbled amid criticism of his government’s treatment of a spiraling security situation in the northern and central regions that has polluted regional and international governments, as well as a mission of the United Nations.
The downfall of Keita, who was first elected in 2013 and returned to office five years later, closely reflects that of his predecessor.
Amadou Toumani Toure was forced out of the presidency in a coup in 2012 after a series of punitive military defeats. At that time, the attacks were carried out by ethnic Tuareg separatist rebels. This time, the Mali military sometimes appears powerless to stop fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS).
The 2012 mutiny also broke out at Kati’s same military camp, hastening the fall of northern Mali to armed groups. Eventually a military operation under French dismissed the fighters, but they simply grouped and expanded their reach in central Mali during Keita’s presidency.
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West Africa bloc ECOWAS calls for Malian unity government (2:29) |
In recent weeks, fears have increased about another military-changed change of power in Mali after ECOWAS regional mediators failed to bridge the gap between Keita’s government and opposition leaders.
Keita sought to meet the demands of Protestants through a series of concessions, and even said he was open to bypassing legislative elections. But those overtures were quickly dismissed by opposition leaders who said they would not stop short of Keita’s dismissal.
Dialogue encouraged
Then on Tuesday, soldiers in Kati pulled weapons out of the barracks and detained military officers. Protesters against anti-government immediately cheered the actions of the soldiers, and some set fire to a building belonging to Mali of justice in the capital.
Cisse urges the soldiers to put their arms down.
“There is no problem whose solution cannot be found through dialogue,” he said in a statement.
But the wheels were already moving – armed men also began holding people in Bamako, including Keita, Cisse and Finance Minister Abdoulaye Daffe.
Tuesday’s developments were condemned by the African Union, the United States, and the ECOWAS regional bloc. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sought “the immediate restoration of constitutional order and regulation”, according to his spokesman.
Moussa Faki Mahamat, president of the African Union, said he “energetically” condemned and called for the arrest of Keita and Cisse.for their immediate release “.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France “condemned this grave event in the strongest terms.” J Peter Pham, the US envoy to the Sahel, said on Twitter that the US “was against any extra-constitutional changes of government”.
ECOWAS dismissed “the coup by Putist soldiers of the democratically elected government” and called for the closure of regional borders with Mali, as well as the suspension of all financial flows between Mali and its 15 member states.
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