A Mail for Mali

By: ralph geeplay

The March 22, seizure of power in Bamako, the Malian capital, was just one more rude awakening that the men in military uniforms in the world’s least develop continent are still thirsty for political power. And Mali, the Western African landlocked country is its latest poster child. It is hard to understand why the coup took place in the first place?! If the main complaint of the army and reason for aborting a democratic government is that it neglected the army and its needs, to waged an all out war against insurgents from the north, then the army has done virtually nothing since coming to power a fortnight ago to take control and beat back the  revolt. The army since seizing control has done a dismal job. The fact that must be laid bare is that the Malian army lacked the guts and fighting spirit to take on the rebels, weapons aside. Since they came to power almost half of the country has fallen to the Islamic radicals in the north, all of this, in less then three weeks.

President Toure

That the Malian army has rolled back the country's stability and its fledging democratic traditions is a sad development, especially when democratic customs in Western Africa are consolidating gradually, with Mali as a prime example.

Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo and his men who are now being bombarded by international condemnation and sanctions were recently in the Nigerian capital of Abuja to appeal for assistance, they got no where, according to reports! The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), now headed by President Alassane Dramane Ouattara of Ivory Coast was quick to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions. The regional body has been forceful in recent years, with Nigeria exerting it weight.  Ouattara, the current ECOWAS Chairman himself came to power last year in what amounted to a power struggle, when his rival and former president Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede the reins of power when he lost the elections meant to return the country to stability after years of civil war. ECOWAS rallied around him; today Gbagbo is awaiting trial in The Hague.

What is an interesting scenario is that although the military men on the continent are still flirting with political power and aborting constitutional rules when they want to, the flip coin is that sitting African presidents are doing the same: stealing elections and getting away with it. You want to talk about Zimbabwe...? Cameroonian president Paul Biya and the Gambian President Yaya Jameh are prime examples of leaders on the continent that are continuously subjecting the people’s choice to good governance, which remains to date, the major issue that holds back Africa’s development and progress! The good news is, Africa's economy is growing 5.5 percent annually and there are even better results to be reaped, if the peoples choice were fully expressed.

 It is refreshing that ECOWAS in an new epoch is speaking and acting with purpose on a united front against those leaders and military men who are determined to roll back the hopes of millions of their countrymen in a no ending game seen again and again to enriched they and their families and take power at all cost to satisfy their egos. Sanogo and his men must have misread the warnings and the hands of times: coups are no longer popular as they once were in the eras of the Samuel Does and Gen Sani Abachas. The paradigm shifts towards these perceptions are helped by a world, where social media which include the internet, the world at large and African leaders elected freely are speaking with one voice: there were international outcry when the Liberian opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) lost the recent elections in that West African country and tried to cry foul, as same, there were condemnations when the ruling party, the Ivorian Popular Front (IPF) of Gbagbo lost, but shouted above everyone else that it won!

Sanogo and his men, who claim they came to restore democracy, will in the short term have no choice but return to the barracks. His claims that “We're going to decide together to have a good, credible election in order to elect a Malian president - not from one side as it used to be. And then we'll go back to our base,” in an interview he gave to the National Public Radio (NPR) is laughable! The country’s deposed president Amadou Toumani Toure’ was duly elected, and was serving his last term with elections due this year. From all indications it seems the coup plotters only sought to help the Tourag rebels, perhaps miscalculating that the outside world would come to their aid and kicked out the Islamic hardliners linked to al qaeda and the former Libyan dictator Mohammad Khadafi, and then when that was done, they would leave them in power to reap the spoils! We are in a new era. Or so I suppose, since the standards sometimes are not applied across the board equitably by the so-called international community!