Mali’s president resigns after troops detain him
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced his resignation late Tuesday on state television, hours after mutinous soldiers fired shots into the air outside his home before detaining him and the prime minister.
The dramatic development came after several months of demonstrations calling for Keita to step down from power three years before his final term was due to end.
Speaking on national broadcaster ORTM just before midnight, a distressed Keita said his resignation was effective immediately. A banner across the bottom of the television screen referred to him as the “outgoing president.”
“I wish no blood to be shed to keep me in power,” Keita said. “I have decided to step down from office.”
He also announced that his government and the National Assembly would be dissolved, certain to further the country’s turmoil amid an eight-year Islamic insurgency and the growing coronavirus pandemic.
Keita, who was democratically elected in 2013 and re-elected five years later, was left with few choices after the mutinous soldiers seized weapons from the armory in the garrison town of Kati on Tuesday and then advanced on the capital of Bamako.
There was no immediate comments from the troops, who hailed from the same military barracks where an earlier coup originated more than eight years ago.
The political upheaval unfolded months after disputed legislative elections, but Keita’s support also had tumbled amid criticism of his government’s handling of an Islamic insurgency that has engulfed the country once praised as a model of democracy in the region.
The military has taken a beating over the past year from Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked groups. A wave of particularly deadly attacks in the north in 2019 prompted the government to close its most vulnerable outposts as part of a reorganization aimed at stemming the losses.
Tuesday’s developments already had been condemned by the African Union, the United States, and the regional bloc known as ECOWAS that had been trying to mediate Mali’s political crisis. Former colonizer France and the United Nations, which has maintained a peacekeeping mission in Mali since 2013, also had expressed alarm ahead of Keita’s speech.