All Heads Together

Three months after they hit the streets to call for Keita’s resignation, the dissolution of the National Assembly and the Constitutional Court, the military came in on August 18, 2020 under the command of Colonel Assimi Goita. By midnight, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced his resignation on the state-run television.

As the country grapples with an intractable insurgency and eight years of instability, anger over the government’s failure to resolve conflict, respect democratic norms, and provide basic services, the instability in the country was already destabilizing the Sahel region highly troubled by terrorists groups like ISIS and al-Qaida.

Although the coup d’état was highly condemned by the international community, it met with celebrations in Bamako. Thousands of unarmed civilians thronged the streets to shower praises on the military junta as they drove through the main streets of Bamako.  The international community, ECOWAS, African Union, European Union and United Nations had only one choice, that of imposing sanctions against the country and pressurizing the coup leaders to hand over power to a civilian government in 12 months.

Today, after several rounds of negotiations spearheaded by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, it is time for different stakeholders to put their personal interest aside and come together in order to make Mali the historic African country it has been in the yester years. To do this, the June 5 Movement-Rally for Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), led by Imam Mahmoud Dicko and the Network of Civil society Organizations must give eno...