With
military officers playing prominent role, the military junta that seized power
in Mali last week wants a three-year transitional body.
This
will certainly bring the junta on a collision with the opposition coalition,
which led unrelenting protests against Boubacar Keita government.
It
will also bring it in collision with ECOWAS leaders, which have a
zero-tolerance for military rule.
However,
the junta has agreed to release ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a
source in a visiting West African delegation said Sunday.
“The
junta has affirmed that it wants a three-year transition to review the
foundations of the Malian state. This transition will be directed by a body led
by a soldier, who will also be head of state,” a source in the ECOWAS
delegation in capital Bamako told AFP.
“The
government will also be predominantly composed of soldiers” under the junta’s
proposal, the source said on condition of anonymity.
The
source added that the junta has agreed to “free president Keita”, who has been
detained along with other political leaders since the coup on Tuesday, and he
“will be able to return to his home” in Bamako.
“And
if he wants to travel abroad for treatment, that is not a problem,” the ECOWAS
source said.
Prime
minister Boubou Cisse, who has been detained with Keita at a military base
outside the capital where the coup began, would be moved to a secure residence
in the city, the source said.
A
junta official confirmed to AFP the decisions on the fate of Keita and Cisse,
as well as that “the three-year transition would have a military president and
a government mostly composed of soldiers”.
The
coup followed months of protests calling for Keita to resign as public
discontent with the government grew over the country’s brutal Islamist
insurgency and collapsing economy.
While
it was met by international condemnation, thousands of opposition supporters
celebrated the president’s ouster in the streets of Bamako.
The
junta has said it “completed the work” of the protesters and has vowed to stage
elections “within a reasonable time”.
However
Mali’s neighbours have called for Keita to be reinstated, saying the purpose of
the visit by the delegation from the regional ECOWAS bloc was to help “ensure
the immediate return of constitutional order”.
Tuesday’s
coup was Mali’s second in eight years, and has heightened concern over regional
stability as its jihadist insurgency that now threatens neighbouring Niger and
Burkina Faso.
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