The intentions of the president of the transition, who overthrew the chief state elected Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta late 2020, remain mysterious.
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His portrait has become in a few months the emblem of all the detractors of France in Africa, the unexpected face of a frond growing and the Mali has become the most ardent. No one knows, however, if the role pleases.
The colonel assimi goict has the rare verb and the art of maintaining the mystery. Eighteen months after his entry into scene in Bamako, the secret did hardly dissipate around the former Malian special forces commander who became the president of the transition. The light ? He leaves it to his Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, always ready to trigger a new verbal salvo towards France, and to his leader of diplomacy, Abdoulaye Diop, responsible for weaving new strategic alliances and loosening the vise On Mali since the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has put the country under economic blockade.
He, from the hill of Koulouba Palace overlooking the capital, saying a word or almost, cultivates his image as President Soldier, on the mission of reconquest of the lost territories of Mali. In the aftermath of the taxation of the new regional sanctions, on January 10, did he have called in his poorly assured voice “to the gathering of all the Malians, without exclusive, to assert our opposition in principle” and asked his Compatriots “to stay calm and serene” while Mali has made the choice to “take his destiny in hand by forging [his] own path”.
Four days later, tens of thousands of Malians descend into the street to show their support against the “diktat” of ECOWAS and France. It remains in the shadows, as mute as the institution in which it was raised and built.
Evident Mansuquetude
Son of a captain, Assimi Goïta is a pure product of these Malian armed forces (Fama), decimated for ten years by a war against jihadist groups and humiliated by the ex-Tuareg and Arab rebel movements that do not have them never allowed to take back foot north of the country. Always strapped in his fighting lattice but never declaring closed to dialogue, Assimi Goict tries to embody the most conciliatory face of the junta he leads, but with what intentions?
If it has been chosen, according to several sources, by its four partners of Putsch – the colonels Sadio Camara, Malick Diaw, Ismaël Wague and Modibo Koné – because of his righteousness, his discretion but also of his malleability, He and the young officers who surround him demonstrate every day a little more than they are more interested in the power they do not say.
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