Malian junta has defied ECOWAS directives as Lawmakers in the West Africa’s country unanimously approved a plan allowing the military junta to rule for up to five years.

On Monday, February 21, 2022, 120 members of Mali’s 121-seat interim parliament voted to allow the junta govern for up to five years, in line with the earlier junta proposal which was rejected by ECOWAS. However, no lawmaker in the army-dominated legislature voted against the bill.

Though Mali’s strongman, Colonel Assimi Goita, has pledged to restore civilian rule, he refused to commit to any date for future polls.

Elections were due last month, January 2022, but were cancelled by Mali’s military leaders, prompting economic sanctions by regional bloc, ECOWAS. Mali is now taking legal action to lift sanctions imposed by West Africa’s monetary union, UEMOA, as it battles a debt crisis.

Akufo-Addo Calls for Transition in Mali

President Akufo-Addo, however, suggested that a 12-month transition period should suffice in the quest to restore constitutional rule in Mali, one of three states in the West African sub-region that suffered a coup d’état in the past 18 months.

The Ghanaian President also suggested that similar or shorter transition periods can also be negotiated in the cases of Guinea and Burkina Faso.

Speaking in an interview with France 24’s Marc Perelman on the sidelines of his visit to Brussels to attend the European Union-African Union (EU-AU) Summit, President Akufo-Addo stated that he and colleagues Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Heads of State have rejected the five-year transition plan proposed by the military junta in Mali because it was completely unacceptable.

President Akufo-Addo noted that ECOWAS, of which he is currently the chair, is prepared to work towards a more acceptable transition period in Mali and the other two states that have also suffered a coup d’état.

“Clearly, the proposal that has been put on the table by the Malian authority is unacceptable. My own feeling from talking to my peers is that a 12-month period would be an acceptable framework.

“You hear it from my mouth, but that is not ECOWAS policy. We need to engage, sit down and find out how that can work out.”
President Akufo-Addo

On the situation in Guinea and Burkina Faso, President Akufo-Addo said it is incumbent on the military regimes in those countries to propose their transition plans to ECOWAS within acceptable timelines.

Tensions with the junta contributed to France’s announcement recently that it was withdrawing its troops from Mali which were deployed under the anti-jihadist Barkhane force in the Sahel.

The landlocked nation of 21 million people has struggled to contain a brutal jihadist insurgency that emerged in 2012, before spreading three years later to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Across the region, thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and two million people have been displaced by the conflict, of which Mali remains the epicentre.

ECOWAS Instability

In the past year and a half, there have been four coups d’état in the ECOWAS sub-region alone.

The first military takeover occurred in Mali on 18th August, 2020, and the second on 24th May, 2021, in the same country.

The third unconstitutional assumption of power took place on 5th September, 2021 in Guinea. Meanwhile, the latest seizure of power occurred on 24th January, 2022 in Burkina Faso.

After each of the recent coups d’état in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, ECOWAS heads of state have imposed sanctions on the new military leaders and demanded that the junta in each of the three countries take immediate steps to restore democratic rule locally.