By Samsudeen Sarr
Tuesday August 11, 2020 marks the resumption of public defiance by Mali’s political opposition parties following their ten-day respite in observation of the Eid al-Fitr, a nightmare to the select ECOWAS mediating committee wishing the potential crisis ahead had been a mere bad dream they will wake up from not to ever see or hear it again.
Because wriggling their behinds out of this quicksand seems an unattainable challenge. The opposition leaders supported by the hormone-soused-unemployment-stricken youth have remained intransigent in their quest for total regime change including the removal of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta aimed at finally ridding Mali of a cancerous corruption undermining any effort to develop the country since gaining independence from France in 1960. And their concern is not only limited to economic corruption but political corruption as well often manifested by the executive branch of government flagrantly violating entrenched clauses in the constitution, unscrupulously influencing the judiciary and the legislature and stealing election votes to indefinitely remain in power.
Hence, as far as the belligerent Malians are concerned, all attempts by the ECOWAS mediating commission, reminiscent of the 2017 rogues that forced the APRC government out of power for President Jammeh’s alleged violation of the Gambian constitution when he annulled the controversial national election results, are now viewed as self-serving tactics from unethical leaders protecting the downfall of their comrade-in dishonesty.
Upon realizing their hopeless efforts, the mediators, spearheaded by President Macky Sall of Senegal with Nigeria’s invalid president Muhammadu Buhari merely participating to prove to the Nigerians and the whole world that his pacemaker is still working and that he is not about to die yet as many think and wish him, are threatening to sanction the opposition if they refused to comply with their recommendations which, among other things, demands that President Keita must serve the rest of his term in office as enshrined for elected presidents in the Malian constitution.
That reasoning appeared quite tenable until France, the colonial master of some of these Africa puppets offered to help the Lebanese in their unexpected ongoing national crisis where President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to raise enough funds for the desperate “Lebanese people and nation” but on the condition that they will first have to change their corrupt leaders, infamous for looting every penny available in the state’s coffers and stashing it in foreign banks.
That is of course tantamount to conditioning the Lebanese to get rid of their corrupt government first in order to change Lebanon for the better no matter what their constitution says about mandates of elected officials or how long or short they must stay in office which to me has no difference with what the Malians are zealously fighting for.
How the Macky Sall led ECOWAS team is going to reconcile the inconsistency of their efforts in Mali with that of France’s in Lebanon, whose African Neo-Colonial interest still gravitates towards retaining President Keita rather than risking a new leadership that may rebel against French control in Mali more or less complicates the whole situation.
Moreover, the latest political outlook in the Ivory Coast and Guinea Conakry where presidents Alassane Ouattara and Alpha Conde respectively are outrightly contravening their national constitutions to run for third term while legally limited to only two terms tend to worsen the ECOWAS quandary. These leaders are also among the most financially and politically corrupt in the sub-region, ready to butcher their constitutions and loot the nation’s treasures to ever stay in power.
The strident measures taken by our sub-regional leaders to ensure that the APRC government respected the constitution of the Gambia, irrespective of the controversial election results that triggered the whole impasse in 2017, seem to motivate the American government into warning the Ivorian and Guinean heads of state not to dare run for third terms. Why ECOWAS and AU are silent about these constitution-infringers, epitomizes the political corruption of our heads of state unfairly manipulating the senile elite running those archaic and useless organizations. Useless ECOMIG deployed in the Gambia since 2017, should now prepare to move to other hot spots in the subregion identified by the United States government.
United States Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is leaving no options out to see that Conde and Ouattarado not stay in office a day beyond the end of their second term mandates. In a statement he recently released to the media-thanks Ebrima Chongan for forwarding the text in both English and French-this is what the English version says against the two crooks verbatim:
Following the events in West Africa particularly in Ivory Coast with President Alassane Ouattara and in Republic of Guinea with President Alpha Conde, the State department and its staff are closely monitoring the political landscape; I am currently in contact with my counterparts with the EU, China, Russia and the African Union.
Listening to the speech the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic of Guinea the American government and its senate, EU and the UN Security Council have decided the following:
(i) Legal notice, with press releases, opinions and resolutions from UEMOA, ECOWAS, the African Union, the European Union, all of which is crowned by a resolution of the UN Security Council.
(ii) Economic sanctions with the suspension of disbursements from the World Bank, the International Monitory Funds, the European Union, the ADB: economic embargo on mining exports and imports of medicines.
(iii) military intervention covered by a UN Security Council resolution as well as travel restriction on members of the two governments.
We are hoping that both leaders and their respective governments will come to decisions according to their constitutions not to run for a third term.
How far the ECOWAS heads of state who fanatically intervened in the Gambian impasse under the leadership of President Macky Sall of Senegal and Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambers, the Ghanaian-born UN representative for West Africa will go to enforce the American suggestion against these corrupt shockers remains to be seen? While they were ready to bomb the Gambia into rubbles and kill all “MFDC rebels” in the Gambia Armed Forces to enforce the dictates of the Gambian constitution, they all are shamelessly quiet about holding their colleagues accountable who in their illegal non-compliances have been abusing their national constitutions and killing unarmed peaceful protesters in droves.
Therefore, I see no reason why the Malian opposition should be blamed, stopped or sanctioned and not supported in what looks like the first “African Spring” that will most likely hit Ivory Coast next before Guinea Conakry and then…
France by every indication doesn’t want to see the departure of President Ibrahim Keita because of his commitment to serve them as another puppet in the French club of African Neo-Colonial presidents like Macky Sall and Ouattara.
But all crystal balls tend to reveal the same prophecy of the beginning of the “African Spring” to replace economically and politically corrupt Neo-Colonial governments with incorruptible true leaders determined to finally build the Africa that serves the needs and interest of its people and not the interest of a few greedy ones and their European masters.
