Mali PM endorses document critical of junta

FILE – Mali Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maiga at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. According to a notice posted on social media, Thursday, April 11, 2024, Mali’s ruling junta has banned the media from reporting on the activities of political parties and associations in the country. The ban followed a decision the previous day that banned all political party activities until further notice. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)

Mali’s civilian Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maiga, has endorsed a statement openly criticising the West African country’s military rulers, a move that landed his ally in prison.

Boubacar Traore, a close associate of Maiga, was arrested on May 28 after signing a statement that strongly opposed the military staying in power for several more years.

“The memorandum for which (Traore) is being held, no one can say that there is a point in it that is false,” Maiga said in a video recorded on Tuesday and posted on the Facebook page of Mali’s Joliba TV News.

However, Maiga also affirmed the need to support junta chief Colonel Assimi Goita and denounced attempts to pit him against the military.

They are his first public comments about the text.

The political movement behind Maiga, the M5-RFP, in May put out a strong statement against the colonels who seized power in 2020 and further extended their rule after failing to keep a March deadline to hold elections and hand over power to a civilian government.

The M5 statement was widely considered to set the seal on the breakdown in relations between the colonels and the prime minister they appointed in 2021.

Traore was the second Maiga supporter to be jailed after Abdelkader Maiga was sentenced to two years for defamation in April.

The colonels have kept a tight hold on the reins of power, following a second putsch in 2021. They have not set a new date to hand over power.

The prime minister voiced support for the process known as a transition period before power is handed back to an elected civilian government.

Maiga has said the junta will only organise elections once the security situation has completely stabilised.

Since 2012, Mali has been plunged into a political and security crisis fuelled by attacks from jihadist and other armed groups, as well as a separatist struggle in the north.