Choguel Maïga was appointed prime minister on Monday and is in charge of forming the government in Mali. He is a persistent politician who takes the helm of the new team at a time when the challenges are many.
From our correspondent in Bamako,
The stage takes place in 1997. The river gates for democracy and multiparty have been open for six years in Mali. Choguel Maïga is the chairman of the Patriotic Movement for Renewal (MPR), which claims to be the only party previously swept away by a popular uprising. He is considered a “plague” by all of Malia’s political class whose slogan is “Long live change!”. He is almost alone against everyone, avoided by a large part of the press.
Draped in one of his famous traditional boubous, he receives us in Bamako for an interview. His phone rings. It was the Prime Minister at the time, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK), who called him a discreet interview. The one who is quite short in stature and weak pace, he bulges out the chest. The “outcast” is starting to become popular. Impossible to hear what the two men are saying to each other. After hanging out, the young leader of MPR launches: “In politics, you need convictions. But after convictions, you have to be persistent! ”
Perseverance, this engineer with a doctorate in telecommunications showed it throughout his school and university. Quite brilliant during the first years of his schooling in northern Mali where he comes from, he continued his studies in the 1970s at the technical high school in Bamako – with good reputation – with the option “Mathematics and Industrial Techniques” (MTI). He graduated from his promotion with a technical student in his pocket. He completed his higher education mainly in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union).
Young, he tested the political terrain, especially within the National Union of Young People of Mali, an association that was phagocytized by the only party of the time.
The man does not know how to cut his words. He is an outstanding tribune. He proved it once again in March last year, during a television program in which he participated on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the uprising in 1991. He met the revolutionaries who had the wind in their sails at the time and who have since faded under a harness. Alone against all, Choguel Maïga finds the words to further defend the one-party regime. Stubborn.
Revenge after a journey strewn with pitfalls
This Monday, June 7, 2021, a little more than thirty years after the Malian revolution, he is definitely taking revenge by joining the office of the Prime Minister. His wounds are probably healing. Because his political career has been littered with pitfalls.
In 1997, he boycotted the presidential and legislative elections. In 2002, he ran for president for the first time. He will not receive a refund of his deposit after receiving a score lower than 5% of the votes cast. In the second round, he called for a vote for General Amadou Toumani Touré, who is sitting in the chair left empty by a giant from the Malian political scene, Alpha Oumar Konaré. For the first time in Mali’s history, a democratically elected president succeeds another.
For the next five years, Choguel Maïgaroule politically followed a very narrow path. His party, which has a tiger for its emblem, had five deputies out of the 147 that the half-cycle had in 2002; and he will have eight in 2007. He makes alliances in the backwater where the caimans dreamed of devouring him.
The man will be minister twice. In 2002, he held the portfolio Industry and Trade for a few years. In 2015, it returned to the government, more specifically to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Communications.
Back to the middle phase with M5
But if he has really returned to the front of the stage, it’s because of his position within the M5-RFP, a motley movement that contributed to the fall of former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, “IBK”.
The Rally of Patriotic Forces, created on June 5, 2020 and made up of political parties and movements, has appointed Choguel Maïga as its “Chairman of the Strategic Committee”.
Like other leaders of the movement, he shows his physical courage. On July 10, 2020, the movements within the M5-RFP pavement struck again. Public buildings are looted. At least two dead and many injured. In the following days, the leaders and activists of the M5-RFP were arrested. Mix with Choguel Maïga. The activists show their muscles. They are determined. The people arrested are still being released.
In a report, the gendarmerie where they were detained specified: “Mr Maïga did not appear to be affected by the detention at all. […] He got phone calls everywhere. ”
Choguel Maïga stands out as the “voice” for the protest. Spokesman for the movement, he floods the press almost daily with press releases, which stop irritating members of the movement. Some begin by speaking directly to the press, with the opposite view of Choguel Maiga’s statements.
When the former Malian president IBK fell on August 18, 2020, M5 – and the president of its strategic committee at the helm – dreams of the big night. Doctor Maïga is 63 years old.
But the movement is divided. Some of this group – especially young people – prefer to join the coup’s military writers. Imam Mahmoud Dicko, a central figure in the M5-RFP, explains that he is returning to his mosque. A nice euphemism to say that the agreement with the leaders of the M5-RFP is over. Members of the movement are dissatisfied with this decision by the influential religious leader. For their part, the soldiers who took power say they want to stay away from political forces and refuse a forced marriage with M5-RFP. Meanwhile, Choguel Maïga refuses to shoot red balls at the imam. He maintains contact, but continues to criticize the new direction the junta took.
The reality is that M5-RFP, before the fall of the former president, was looking for a new life. The ruling junta did not intend to rule with this man from the past. This is the reason why, in September, for the appointment of the new Prime Minister – the junta, which already has the President’s name in its portfolio – the soldiers are asking all candidates for this post to submit their documents. Choguel Maïga, cunning as a Sioux, knows the battle. Unlike other of his comrades in the movement, he does not lean towards submitting his candidacy file. He understood that. Even there, the soldiers had already chosen their candidate and tried to create a diversion by showing that the position was open to all candidates.
Perseverance that pays off
Nine months later, Colonel Assimi Goïta, Vice President of the Transition, after having landed the transition president Bah N’Daw and his prime minister Moctar Ouane, which he himself had chosen, needs a new alliance to govern. He then throws himself into the arms of the M5-RFP, which accepts the Prime Minister’s office. One week before, ahead of the last government change that will trigger a new crisis, an edge of the M5-RFP refused the folding seats proposed by the president for the transition.
Today, Colonel Assimi Goïta and Choguel Maïga’s camp threw quarrels into the river. Gone are the days when the military did not want to work with the M5-RFP. And vice versa.
The Prime Minister’s perseverance has borne fruit. But at what cost? To occupy the Prime Minister’s cozy chair, Dr. Choguel Maïga still, on several subjects, wore a hat. He who demanded a civilian president for the transition will finally work with Colonel Assimi Goïta. And to show that it does not bother him in any way, he has already made himself his spokesman on June 4, 2021 during an M5 RFP rally, when he has not yet been officially appointed Prime Minister. Speaking at this meeting, when Paris had just suspended its military cooperation with Bamako due to the second coup in nine months, he turned indirectly to France to diplomatically give assurances: “What the president of the transition instructed me to send and reassure all our partners.The Malian people want to regain their independence, their dignity, he wants to work in honor and we pay special attention.We will remain aware of the concerns of our main partners, which are the countries that reached us when we had difficulties , but today we need a new life. “
The man of compromise
The one who was a brilliant student also took off his hat on what is a little grail in his political career: Algiers peace agreement, signed between the former northern rebels and the government. He always believed that this agreement would inevitably lead to the division of Mali. A successor to a shady nationalism, he is still now ready to apply the agreement. In order to convince the most skeptical, he also received, even before he took office, a delegation of former rebels. “Indeed, during the meeting, he assured us that we are all Malians and that he did not come to behave like an elephant in a china shop,” said a member of the delegation. Ex-rebels.
Choguel Maïga is now abandoning another of his demands: the dissolution of the National Transitional Council (CNT), the transitional legislative body. The M5-RFP, which found that it was not at all representative of the people, had asked the courts to declare this body “illegal”. The new Prime Minister must today have his government program validated by the CNT, hence the function of the charm that has begun.
Difficulties will quickly get in the way. The first is that – as planned – presidential and legislative elections will be held at the end of February. If he wants to keep the dates, how is he going to do it? If he wants to postpone the deadline, how will he be able to pass the thread through the eye of the needle without provoking the wrath of the international community?
The second challenge, let’s repeat, is that he was not elected by the military because he has the most magnificent boubou in the local political class. The choice of soldiers is more a matter of strategy. Will the couple Choguel Maïga / Colonel Assimi Goïta work?
Two famous experiences in Mali, 2012 and 2020, left a bitter taste. We have seen a “cohabitation tension” and not a cohabitation between soldiers and civilians at the forefront of the transition.
The new president of the transition, who swore in on Monday, June 7, 2021, will concentrate in their hands many forces. He will appoint his relatives to sovereign positions. His prime minister, will he then just be a “simple employee”? Relatives and activists of the new prime minister’s party are calling for caution.
In any case, Abdoulaye Sissoko, a declared party sociologist for Choguel Maïga, advises not to underestimate him: “If you take his political path since the 1990s, he always knows where he is setting his foot. He made compromises with people like former president Amadou Toumani Touré who is still the killer of his mentor, General Moussa Traoré. He made compromises with the leaders of the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adéma), which is the political formation that took power in 1992 and which created all sorts of problems for it. Choguel is the man of compromise, but not compromise. I think he’s gonna be okay. “
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