Politics

Malian military leader signs election law that will allow him contest in 2024: Is this deja vu?

Published

2 years ago

June 26, 2022

Leader of the Malian military junta, Col. Assimi Goita, has signed a new law which will pave the way for elections in 2024 and a return of the West African country to constitutional rule.

Col. Goita who has been president of the transitional government since seizing power in a coup two years ago, signed the law on Friday which will create a single election management body to replace a disputed three-party system.

The new law would also allow Goita and other military members of the transitional government eligible to run for elective positions in the next presidential election.

The law is seen as a step in the right direction after the West Africa regional bloc, the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), imposed stiff sanctions on Mali earlier this year after the military rulers refused to organise elections in February as planned.

Mali and the 15-member ECOWAS have also been at logger heads over the coup leaders’ proposed five year timeline to elections, before proposing a two-year timeline, which ECOWAS deemed was too long.

The interim military government had, onJune 6, issued a decree fixing the two-year timetable, to be counted from March 2022, while negotiations with ECOWAS were still ongoing.

The law which gives room for Col. Goita to contest in the Mali election sounds like a deja vu situation too familiar with military coup leaders on the African continent, many of whom, over the years, transformed into civilian leaders, comfortably shedding their khaki uniforms for a civilian garb depending on the country’s national and traditional wear.

Goita does not lack inspiration as several examples abound from the length and breadth of Africa where the leaders ride into power on the barrels of guns but end up transforming into civilian presidents.

Africa will not forget the likes of Muamar Gaddafi in Libya, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, Idi Amin Dada and Yoweri Museveni in
Uganda, Paul Kagame in Rwanda,
Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in Egypt, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia.

Others in the distinguished list include Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, and a host of other African leaders who went from military head of states to civilian presidents.

Related Topics:Decree Elections Featured Mali Military Coup

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Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

10 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.