Published on : 22/08/2022 – 14:48
The announcement was made Sunday evening on the airwaves of ORTM, the state radio and television. It has now been ten days since the incumbent, Choguel Maïga, has been hospitalized in a clinic in Bamako. Put in ” forced rest “, according to the Malian transitional authorities, ” after fourteen months of tireless work “, the head of government would have had a stroke or a heart attack, according to some sources. Already Minister of Territorial Administration and spokesman for the government since December 2021, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, who is now acting, has become in a few months a figure well known to Malians.
Malians are used to seeing him on television reading official government communiqués. Always in fatigues and always in a martial tone, not hesitating to repeat the toughest passages three or four times and sometimes allowing himself certain shocking formulas, as when he quoted the poet Alfred de Vigny to invite the French Minister for the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, in silence ».
It was also he who had urged President Emmanuel Macron to leave ” its neo-colonial, paternalistic and condescending posture. “A style that has contributed to his notoriety, and which will not clash too much with the Prime Minister, the man he replaces, Choguel Maïga, being himself a regular at provocative and muscular outings -“ populists » et « plotters “, rather say his detractors.
A reputed soldier close to the president
Colonel Maïga is a gendarmerie colonel, he is not a member of the CNSP junta which took power two years ago, and which is now officially dissolved, but he is reputed to be close to the transitional president, The colonel Like Goita.
After military studies during which he rubbed shoulders with some of the putschist colonels, Abdoulaye Maïga studied diplomacy and international law in Algiers. Above all, he has completed training in France – which is obviously funny today given the relations between the two countries -: defense and international security policies in Paris and Lyon, but also human rights and humanitarian law in Évry . He has also started a doctorate in business law. Overqualified, Colonel Maïga is not a man of the field, but rather an expert in security and governance issues. He wrote a thesis on the credibility of ECOWAS to ensure peace and security.
Above all, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga worked within the Economic Community of West African States – in the Early Warning Directorate on the Prevention of Terrorism and the United Nations – as a police officer for Monusco, the mission in the DRC, two organizations with which the Malian transitional authorities have been in conflict in recent months. Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga has also had sometimes violent words against his former employers: ECOWAS has, for example, been accused of being ” unfair » et « inhuman when it imposed, between January and last July, economic sanctions in Mali to speed up the return to constitutional order. Colonel Maïga also served in the African Union.
And “ constant concern for efficiency »
As Minister of Territorial Administration, Abdoulaye Maïga is responsible for preparing next elections which should mark the return to constitutional order, a major challenge for the country which has made him an interlocutor of the Malian political parties. In any case since June and the relaunch of the consultation framework which periodically brings together the government and the Malian political parties. Before that, the parties complained that they were not taken into account. Even today, these parties complain that they are not listened to, for example on the designation of the members of the future single electoral management body.
41-year-old Colonel Maïga describes himself in his CV as having a “ constant concern for efficiency. A quality that also guided the transitional president, Colonel Assimi Goïta, in his choice.