Among the watchwords of this initiative are the respect of the electoral calendar provided for a return of civilians in power and the abandonment of the new constitution project.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
A group of young people suddenly interrupted Monday, February 20, in Bamako, the conference of public figures who announced the launch of a new critical movement against the ruling colonels in Mali on Monday, February 20 in Bamako, reported social networks and witnesses.
Videos published on social networks show the group of a few dozen young people entering the press house and covering the speeches by a deafening din of slogans and horns. Shortly after, chairs fly on both sides in a large jostling and the windows of the press house are broken at the time of the group’s exit.
Young people brandish a banner proclaiming “The Malian people no longer follow a manipulator” and apparently targeting one of the initiators of the conference, Issa Kaou N’Djim. The instigators of this intrusion were not identified. Mr. N’Djim has one of the initiators of the conference, Issa Kaou N’Djim “who [is] behind it? I think that this question must be asked to the authorities,” he told AFP. “Nothing is done without the discreet surveillance of the authorities,” he added.
Several personalities, including Issa Kaou N’Djim, launched an attempt to gather parties and organizations of civil society with still fuzzy contours, baptized “Call of February 20 to save Mali”. This initiative intervenes in a context where the military who took power by force in August 2020 hold all the levers and where any organized challenge is almost silenced or helpless.
” Physical attacks “
The “desire to impose silence on everyone, that was not enough, now it is physical attacks,” said Mr. N’Djim to AFP. Among the watchwords of this initiative are the respect of the electoral calendar provided for a return of civilians in power and the abandonment of the new constitution project.
This request for abandonment goes directly against the plans of the junta, which made a new constitution an essential element of its program and an argument to continue to direct the country to elections programmed in 2024. A referendum is scheduled for March on this new Constitution, but doubt will grow regarding compliance with the calendar.
Among the groups that support the Monday call is the coordination of the Imam Mahmoud Dicko (CMAS) movements, associations and sympathizers. The faithful of this religious influential had suffered jets of tear gas from the security forces in January, on his return from Saudi Arabia. The imam had been the tutelary figure in 2020 of the mobilization against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, re-elected two years earlier and finally overthrown by the soldiers.
m. N’Djim, another host of this mobilization, first supporter of Colonel Assimi Goïta, the head of the junta, distanced himself from the military. He had been arrested in October 2021 for “subversive remarks”, “disturbances of public order and damage to state credit” and sentenced in December to six months in prison sentence.
m. N’Djim recently started to get out of his silence. “The only thing I agree on to help the transition [the current political process] and prevent us from entering another crisis is to help Assimi to do the elections and that it returns to barracks, “he said recently on private television.