BAMAKO, April 19, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Mali’s prime minister resigned along with
his entire government on Thursday following criticism over their handling of
an upsurge of violence in the centre of the country and a massacre last month
that left 160 people dead.
A statement from President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s office said he had
accepted Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga’s resignation, along with those of his
ministers, two weeks after mass protests erupted over the rising tide of
violence.
Lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties had submitted a motion
of no confidence against the government on Wednesday, blaming Maiga and his
administration for failing to clamp down on the unrest.
“A prime minister will be named very soon and a new government will be put
in place after consultations with all political forces” from both the ruling
and opposition sides, the statement from Keita’s office said.
The president had on Tuesday said in a televised address that he had
“heard the anger”, without explicitly naming the prime minister.
The government had come under mounting pressure over its handling of
violence in the restive Mopti region and especially a massacre on March 23 in
which 160 people were killed in the village of Ogossagou near the border with
Burkina Faso.
Members of the Dogon ethnic group — a hunting and farming community with
a long history of tension with the nomadic Fulani people over access to land
— were accused of being behind the mass killing.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Bamako on April 5 to
protest against the upsurge of violence, accusing the government of not doing
enough to stop it.
The protest was called by Muslim religious leaders, organisations
representing the Fulani herding community, opposition parties and civil
society groups.
Mali has been struggling to restore stability since Islamist extremists
linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the country’s vast desert north in early
2012.
While the jihadists were largely driven out in a French-led military
operation that began in January 2013, huge areas are still in the grip of
lawlessness, despite a 2015 peace agreement with some armed groups that
sought to definitively stamp out the Islamist threat.
Since then, militants have shifted from the north towards the more densely
populated centre of the country, where they have sharpened ancient rivalries
and ethnic conflicts that date back years.
Jihadist attacks have also spread to Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger, forcing
tens of thousands of people from their homes.