A day after dismissing Choguel Maiga for criticising the government, Mali’s governing junta named its spokesperson, Abdoulaye Maiga, as Prime Minister on Thursday, according to state broadcaster, ORTM.

A source close to Choguel Maiga told Reuters that the ruling generals were incensed by Maiga’s remarks over the weekend denouncing the junta’s inability to hold elections within the 24-month timeframe given for the return to democracy.

After promising to hold elections in February, the military authorities, who took control in two separate coups in 2020 and 2021, have put off the poll indefinitely, citing technological difficulties.

Choguel Maiga’s firing coincides with indications of growing discontent and disarray among Mali politicians, even those who first supported the coup and collaborated with the junta.

As the wait for elections continues, Choguel Maiga, a civilian prime minister who was installed by the military junta in 2021, is the most recent to lose support.

He was cited on Saturday as claiming he learnt of the junta’s decision via the media and that there had been no discussion regarding the delay of the elections inside the cabinet.

“It’s all happening in total secrecy, without the prime minister’s knowledge,” Choguel Maiga told reporters.

Before then, he had frequently stood up for Mali’s junta against criticism from foreign friends and neighbours in West Africa who denounced its repeated election delays and military collaboration with Russian mercenaries.

As government spokesperson, Abdoulaye Maiga, the new prime minister, has also made strong public remarks against France, the previous colonial master. One such speech was demanding French President Emmanuel Macron to stop his “neocolonial” and “condescending” behaviour.

Abdoulaye Maiga and Assimi Goita, the leaders of the junta, announced they had kept all of the important cabinet ministers in their portfolios in the new administration in a statement that was broadcast on state television ORTM.

The announcement said that Abdoulaye Maiga will remain minister of territory administration.

According to his wife on Wednesday, a well-known opposition leader from Uganda, Kizza Besigye was abducted during a book launch in Kenya over the weekend, taken to Uganda, and detained at a military prison in Kampala.

Despite his rejection of the results, Besigye has run against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four times and lost each time, claiming voting intimidation and fraud. He has been arrested several times in the past.

“I request the (government) of Uganda to release my husband Dr Kizza Besigye from where he is being held immediately,” said his wife Winnie Byanyima.

It was not immediately possible to get in touch with a Ugandan military spokesperson for comment.

“As police we don’t have him, so we can’t make any comment,” Ugandan police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke told Reuters.
A spokesperson for Kenya’s national police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, one of Uganda’s major opposition parties, had 36 members arrested by Kenyan police in July. They were then deported to Uganda and accused of terrorism-related charges.

On the social networking site X, Byanyima stated that Besigye, who served as Museveni’s doctor during the guerrilla war but later turned into a vocal opponent, was abducted on Saturday as senior Kenyan opposition leader Martha Karua was launching a book.

“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” said Byanyima, who is the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. “We his family and his lawyers demand to see him. He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”

Museveni’s administration has been charged with repeatedly violating the human rights of opposition leaders and followers, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and unlawful detentions.