The head of the junta in Mali, Colonel Assimi Goïta, appointed, on Sunday August 21, another colonel, Minister Abdoulaye Maïga, interim prime minister to replace the civilian Choguel Maïga, hospitalized a few days ago.
In addition to the important portfolio of territorial administration and decentralization, Abdoulaye Maïga, aged about forty, was also the government spokesman.
Little known before his appointment to this post at the end of 2021, he has regularly made on national television, in recent months – and dressed in his trellis – some of the most striking government announcements and statements aimed at France; he had so “required” at the end of July of President Emmanuel Macron whom he leaves “definitely its neocolonial, paternalistic and condescending posture”.
Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga is believed not to have been part of the circle of officers who took power by force with Colonel Goïta in August 2020. But he is considered close to the strong man of Mali and has become the voice of the policy of rupture with France and its allies initiated after a second putsch which, in May 2021, had dismissed the civilian president and prime minister. Colonel Goïta was then invested as transitional president.
No news on the health of Choguel Maïga
With the designation of Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga as head of government, the two heads of the executive are, at least temporarily, soldiers, while the colonels had resigned themselves under international pressure after the 2020 putsch to entrust the two positions to civilians, while retaining the upper hand in decision-making.
Choguel Maïga, a veteran of Malian politics, had been chosen to be the head of government after the second putsch in May 2021. He was hospitalized eight days ago after a heart attack, according to a hospital official. His services then contented themselves with announcing that after “fourteen months of unremitting work, [il avait] was put on forced rest by his doctor”. They announced his return to work the following week, but no further official news of him has been given since then.
He has been criticized for several months by many political leaders who are calling for his resignation and by many of his former allies in the June 5 Movement, of which he is one of the founders and which played a leading role in the protest preceded the takeover by the military in 2020.