An extraordinary summit of ECOWAS Heads of State opens tomorrow Saturday in Accra, capital of Ghana, which holds the rotating presidency of the Economic Community of West African States. This summit will be immediately followed – same day, same place – by a meeting of the Heads of State of Uemoa, the West African Economic and Monetary Union. At the heart of the discussions: the transitions underway in the three countries that have recently experienced military coups: Guinea, Burkina, and above all Mali, which hopes, during this summit, for a possible lifting of the sanctions affecting the country since early January. For this, an agreement will have to be reached on the holding of future elections for a return to constitutional order.
The military junta led by the current transitional president, Colonel Assimi Goita, took power in August 2020, a year and nine months ago. The challenge of this summit is to know when this power will be returned to the Malians. After giving up on organizing presidential and legislative elections last February, as they had initially promised, the authorities in Bamako initially proposed to extend the transition for another five years.
This proposal having been considered provocative by the neighboring countries of ECOWAS, Bamako finally proposed an extension of four, then finally two additional years. For the Transitional Prime Minister Choguel Maiga, as for all the support of the current authorities, it is no longer possible to go down further. ECOWAS is asking for a return to constitutional order within sixteen months.
An ECOWAS manipulated by France?
Drissa Meminta is the spokesperson for Yerewolo-Debout sur les remparts, a political organization close to the transitional authorities. He believes, and this is also the official discourse of Bamako, that ECOWAS is manipulated from the outside. ” ECOWAS has quite simply decided to serve interests other than those of its community, he thinks, and the only country that said it was going to isolate Mali, today, It’s France. The problem is wanting to bring everything back to elections, whereas here in Mali, there are real problems that need time to be resolved. At ECOWAS, some heads of state have understood this. Those who have not understood this, who want to serve the interests of others, we will work to ensure that they return to better feelings… or leave like the others. »
This is not the case with Yerewolo, but many pro-junta organizations even want Mali to withdraw from ECOWAS. A recurrent death in the demonstrations organized in recent months in support of the authorities.
Bamako’s firmness comes up against ECOWAS sanctions
But Bamako faces a dilemma. The authorities present their stay in power as a defense of national sovereignty and as an imperative necessity to carry out certain reforms, before organizing elections. But this firmness comes up against a certain reality: the economic and financial sanctions imposed at the beginning of January by ECOWAS to force Bamako to organize elections. These sanctions penalize Malian households and, even more, public finances. Despite the response measures introduced by Bamako to circumvent these sanctions, and the official discourse according to which the consequences of these sanctions were minimal, the Malian authorities of the transition no longer hide seeking to get out of this situation and obtain a rapid lifting of the penalties.
Sociologist Aly Tounkara is a teacher-researcher at the University of Bamako and director of the Center for Security and Strategic Studies in the Sahel. “ The lifting of these sanctions appears to be an absolute necessity for the Malian authorities, ask the researcher, it should not be obscured. The authorities are cornered by emergencies: entries to customs services have been seriously impacted, and the authorities are still struggling to make ends meet. All development projects, initiatives for change, are now suspended, because all efforts are focused on the payment of salaries and military action. »
16 month deal? 18 months ?
Also, several sources at the heart of the negotiations assure that the Malian transitional authorities are finally ready to revise their ambitions downwards and do not hide their optimism on the fact that a compromise could well be found: sixteen additional months, eighteen months, are the figures circulating…
But the duration is not the only element of negotiation: Bamako wants an immediate lifting of the sanctions, while the ECOWAS considers possible, since the very day of their introduction, only a gradual lifting of the sanctions, which would depend on the progress of electoral preparations.
The establishment of a so-called “mission” government, which would devote itself in particular to these preparations, and which could be more open to the Malian political class, is also on the table.
Include political parties
Housseini Amion Guindo is the president of the Cadre which brings together Mali’s opposition political parties. Former minister, president of the Codem party and of the New Hope-Jigiya Kura movement, he does not advance on the reasonable duration of the extension of the transition. “ The sooner we get out of this exceptional period, the better it will be for Malihe asks simply. Today, what is sought by our authorities and by ECOWAS is inclusiveness. When we talk about compromise, when we talk about consensus, we must involve the political class and Malian civil society. We hope that the rest of the transition period will be peaceful, and for that people need to talk to each other, here in Mali! »
ECOWAS could finally require certain guarantees on individual freedoms – of opinion, expression – or even on respect for the law in certain legal proceedings in progress.
For several weeks, to supplement the laborious efforts of the official mediator, the Nigerian Goodluck Jonathan, diplomatic initiatives have been intense. An emissary from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been touring the sub-region since the end of April. The president of Togo, at the request of Bamako, pleads the cause of the Malian transitional authorities to the Heads of State of the sub-region. Niger and Côte d’Ivoire are, according to diplomatic sources, the countries whose line is the hardest. We will know tomorrow if these initiatives have borne fruit.