Mali coup leaders promise election

BAMAKO: Soldiers who ousted Mali’s president and government in a coup promised on Wednesday to oversee elections within a “reasonable” time, as calls abroad grew for a swift resolution to an acute political crisis.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita resigned and dissolved parliament on Tuesday after the mutineers detained him at gunpoint, further destabilising a country in the grip of a jihadist insurgency and plagued by recent civil unrest.

Fearing Keita’s fall after nearly seven years in power could destabilise West Africa’s entire Sahel region, the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Mali from its institutions.

The African Union chairman, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, demanded an immediate return to civilian government. As investors ditched shares in Mali-based gold mining companies, the mutineers had yet to identify their leader though the mood in the capital Bamoko appeared calm.

A spokesman for the mutineers, calling themselves the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, said they had acted to prevent further “chaos, anarchy and insecurity.”“We are not keen on power, but we are keen on the stability of the country, which will allow us to organise general elections ...within the reasonable time limit,” Colonel Ismael Wague said early on Wednesday on state television.

He called neighbouring armies and the country’s UN and French peacekeeping forces the group’s “partners for stability and restoring security”.In Paris, a French military source told Reuters the French army has submitted several options in response to President Emmanuel Macron. Wague also invited Mali’s civil society and political movements to help create conditions for a political transition.

There was no immediate reaction to that offer. The presidency of the G5 Sahel group of neighbouring states urged Malians to resolve the crisis peacefully, and demanded Keita’s release, and European Union Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton said elections should be held reasonably quickly.

Landlocked Mali has struggled to regain stability since a Tuareg uprising in 2012 that was hijacked by militants.Keita, 75, came to power in 2013 following a subsequent coup in Bamako, promising to bring peace and stability and fight corruption. He won a second five-year term in 2018.