Assimi Goïta: Mali military leader granted five-year term in power
The 41-year-old military leader was named transitional president after his last coup in 2021.At the time he promised to hold elections the following year - but has since reneged, in a blow to efforts to restore multi-party rule.The transitional bill was on Thursday unanimously approved by 131 members of the National Transitional Council, which is composed of 147 legislators. The council had already adopted the measure in April.The president of the legislative body, Malick Diaw, called the development "a major step forward in the rebuilding of Mali". "The adoption of this text is in accordance with the popular will," he said.The bill allows the transitional president, government and legislative members to stand in presidential and general elections.The military government has been trying to quell jihadist violence unleashed by groups linked with the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda.Since taking power, the junta leader has formed an alliance with coup leaders in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, pivoting the region towards Russia after cutting ties with former colonial power France.Gen Goïta has also withdrawn Mali from the regional grouping Ecowas over its demands to restore democratic rule. Burkina Faso and Niger have also left the grouping.He first staged a coup in August 2020 overthrowing then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta after huge anti-government protests against his rule and his handling of the jihadist insurgency.However, these attacks have continued and even intensified since he took power.Gen Goïta handed power to an interim government that was to oversee the transition to elections within 18 months.He had sought to lead that government, but Ecowas insisted on a civilian leader.Unhappy with the performance of the civilian transitional arrangement, he seized power again in May 2021.
You may also be interested in:
The region with more 'terror deaths' than rest of world combinedThree military-run states leave West African bloc - what will change?Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
The world's oldest president is running again: can anyone stop him from winning?
Opposite Treasure Hunter, one of four casinos on the same street in Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, money changers and motorcycle taxi drivers such as André Ouandji mill around, calling out to potential clients. Ouandji has worked in the area for three years but has not entered the casinos. He prefers to frequent the sports betting shop in his local neighbourhood of Bonabéri. Cameroon has the second-best performing economy in central Africa, but despite this a third of the population live on $2 or less daily and, according to a 2023 survey by the country's National Statistics Institute, eight in 10 of the workforce are informally employed. Against this backdrop, gambling and betting have become increasingly popular. 'We stopped relying on the government for anything years ago,' said Ouandji, who is 27. Like many young Cameroonians, he is undecided about whether to vote in October's presidential election. In a country where the median age is 18 and average life expectancy is 63, the overwhelming favourite is the 92-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, president since 1982. He formally declared his candidacy for another seven-year term on 13 July, brushing aside calls from inside and outside the country to step aside. 'Together, there are no challenges we cannot meet,' he wrote on X. 'The best is still to come.' Biya's decades-long rule has been accompanied by a decline in voter turnout. The abstention rate in the 1992 election – widely believed to have been stolen from the late opposition leader John Fru Ndi – was 19.6%. By 2018 it had hit 46.7%. Eighteen-year-old Serge (not his real name), a first-year geography student at the University of Douala, said prioritising his economic future in a country of high unemployment and rampant nepotism was more important to him than voting. 'My dream was to be a lawyer but you need connections for jobs, your father needs to be placed somewhere, so I settled for being a teacher which is easier,' he said. Supporters of the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM) point to the country's overall economic performance relative to its neighbours and say they prefer stability to the unknown. Some even believe Biya's mandate is divine. 'No authority can exist unless it comes from God,' said Antoine Nkoa, the author of the 51-page pamphlet 10 Good Reasons Why You Should Vote Paul Biya in 2025. Nkoa, who lives in the capital, Yaoundé, said he had never met the president but that he had an early morning vision of the world's oldest president winning again. Such a vision represents a nightmare scenario for Barthélemy Yaouda Hourgo, the Catholic bishop of Yagoua in the country's Far North region. 'Enough is enough,' he said in January while urging Biya, the son of a catechist, to call it quits. Christopher Nkong, the secretary general of the leading opposition party, Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), said in an interview that Biya had 'outlived his usefulness'. 'We say, 'Papa you have done your best. Can you not leave for another Cameroonian to take over?'' Biya's critics say his supporters are out of touch with reality. Endemic corruption and a cost of living crisis have been exacerbated by concurrent conflicts with armed anglophone separatists in the west sending thousands into neighbouring Nigeria, jihadists in the Far North region and criminal kidnapping gangs in the so-called triangle of death near the borders with Chad and Central African Republic. Experts say the crises could make voting in some areas harder, which would favour Biya. The election takes place a few days after separatists mark the independence of the breakaway state of Ambazonia. At least seven people including a priest were killed by security officials during the 2018 election weekend in Buea and Bamenda, the main cities in anglophone Cameroon. In a twist to proceedings, two of Biya's longtime allies – the influential ministers Bello Bouba Maigari and Issa Tchiroma – resigned from the cabinet within days of each other in June and declared their intention to run against him. 'We are in misery,' Tchiroma said from his home town of Garoua in the north, a hunting ground for the jihadists of Boko Haram. The same month, Léon Onana, a municipal councillor, filed a lawsuit to compel CPDM to organise its first national congress since 2011 on the grounds that 'we cannot remain in a party where everything revolves around a single individual'. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion MRC hopes to rally the undecided and uninterested to vote in large numbers for its candidate, the former justice minister Maurice Kamto. 'Everybody is feeling the pinch of mismanagement, embezzlement, non-development, low standards of living, and poverty brought by the regime [which] knows that it is unpopular,' said Nkong. But, he added, 'to uproot a dictator is not a day's job'. Despite efforts by civil society groups to mobilise people to register to vote, and moves by multiple opposition parties to coalesce into a coalition, some say the field has already been rigged in favour of Biya. The country's electoral commission, Elections Cameroon, for example, comprises several former ruling party members and is not seen as impartial. The commission is supervised by the all-powerful minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, a self-described 'Biyaiste' nicknamed Moulinex National after the French kitchen blender for his threats to Biya's opponents. Among his critics, Biya is seen as a master of divide and rule. For years, CPDM has been accused of sponsoring political parties to cause confusion within opposition ranks and armed separatist factions to stir chaos. A law forbidding parties from campaigning until a month before the election often does not seem to apply to CPDM. The government was approached for comment. Shortly after Kamto held a mass rally with the diaspora in Paris at the end of May, he was put under house arrest. Some of his supporters were also locked up in police cells for two days. 'The police, gendarme and military came,' a witness who wished to remain anonymous said. Kah Walla, the leader of the left-leaning Cameroon People's party, has similar stories of harassment. 'In the last year, my office here has been surrounded by police tanks and water cannons,' she said. 'If I cannot hold a normal political meeting, then for sure I cannot be a candidate in the election … it's an aberration to even call these things elections.' Her party is boycotting the elections, as it did in 2018, demanding serious reforms instead. 'I always tell Cameroonians, if we are asked to go to a football tournament, say in Nigeria, and the referees are Nigerian, the people allowing people into the stadium are Nigerian, and the stadium is on a hill with Nigeria at the top and the other teams are at the bottom, Cameroonians will say bring the team back home.' In some circles there is hopeful talk on social media of a 'post-Biya era'. MRC has urged young people to copy its Senegalese counterparts, who stayed at polling stations during vote-tallying last year to 'protect their votes' and helped unseat the ruling party. Some experts say another post-election scenario may be a repeat of events in Gabon, where the re-election of Ali Bongo in August 2023 triggered unrest and a coup. There is the sense that many Cameroonians will be comfortable with either scenario. 'There will be no error in 2025,' Nkong said. 'CPDM's time has ended.'
The Guardian
13 hours ago
- The Guardian
Arrested Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi faces terror charges
The Kenyan rights activist Boniface Mwangi is accused of 'facilitation of terrorist acts' during protests that rocked the country last month, investigators said on Sunday, a day after he was arrested. At least 19 people were killed during the 25 June demonstration against President William Ruto's government, which was itself called to pay tribute to victims of police violence at another protest on the same date last year. Mwangi, who was arrested at his home near Nairobi, is being held at a police station in the capital and will be arraigned on Monday, Kenya's Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said on X. The activist denies the charges, saying in a social media post shared by his supporters: 'I am not a terrorist.' His detention triggered a wave of condemnation online, with the hashtag #FreeBonifaceMwangi going viral. The search warrant police used to raid Mwangi's home, which an ally shared with journalists, accuses the campaigner of having paid 'goons' to stoke unrest at last month's protests. Investigators said they had seized two mobile phones, a laptop and several notebooks from his home in Lukenya, east of the capital, plus hard drives, two more computers, two unused teargas canisters and a blank firearm cartridge from his office in Nairobi. Since the start of the protest movement last year, Ruto has faced sharp criticism over a series of abductions and police violence. Rights groups say more than 100 people have been killed since the beginning of the protests, which were harshly suppressed.
The Guardian
13 hours ago
- The Guardian
Letter: Sandy Gall obituary
As a reporter working for Reuters, Sandy Gall was sent with his young family to South Africa. He recounted that in 1960 Nigel Ryan, an eventual editor and chief executive of ITN, but in those early days also working for Reuters, rang him from the Congo. He asked Sandy to join him there, without giving any further explanation. As Sandy stepped off the plane, he realised that he was in the middle of a full-scale revolution. When he met up with Ryan, he said: 'It's ridiculous, you reporting this all on your own.' 'Actually, I wasn't,' said Ryan. 'There was this other chap but when he sat down at his typewriter a couple of days ago, he froze with his hands above the keys. Nervous breakdown. Had to be carried off to hospital, but now you're here.'
