The head of the junta in Mali, Colonel Assimi Goïta, appointed another colonel this Sunday, Minister Abdoulaye Maïga, interim prime minister to replace the civilian Choguel Kokalla Maïga, hospitalized a few days ago.
“Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, has been appointed to replace Choguel Kokalla Maiga, Prime Minister, Head of Government,” says a decree read on state television.
In addition to the important Decentralization portfolio, Abdoulaye Maïga, in his forties, was also the Government spokesman. Little known prior to his appointment to this role at the end of 2021, he has regularly performed in this role over the past several months, sporting his trellis, on national television in some of the most garish government announcements and abrupt statements. against France.
Thus, he had “demanded” President Emmanuel Macron at the end of July to abandon “definitively his neo-colonial, paternalistic and condescending position.”
The voice of the politics of rupture with France
Colonel Maïga is said not to have been part of the circle of officers who seized power by force with Colonel Goïta in August 2020. But he is considered close to the Malian strongman and has become the voice of Malian politics. rupture with France and its allies. started after a second coup that, in May 2021, removed the civilian president and the prime minister.
With the appointment of Colonel Maïga as head of government, the two heads of the executive are, at least temporarily, military, while the colonels had given up under international pressure after the 2020 coup to entrust the two positions to civilians, maintaining control over decision making.
Choguel Kokalla Maïga, a veteran of Malian politics, was elected to be the head of government after the second coup in May 2021. He was hospitalized eight days ago after a heart attack, according to a hospital official.
His services were content then to indicate that after “14 months of working without rest, (he had) been put on forced rest by his doctor”. They announced his return to work the following week. But there has been no further news of him officially since then.
Source: BFM TV
