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MALI-VOTE-KEITA-PROFILE
‘No shrinking violet’: Mali’s re-elected Keita
BAMAKO, Aug 16, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita,
who notched up a landslide re-election victory on Thursday, has built a
reputation as an uncompromising leader.
The 73-year-old won 67 percent of the vote pitting him against his former
finance minister Soumaila Cisse in a run-off on Sunday, though the opposition
has vowed to contest the outcome.
“He believes in strong, centralised power, that is for sure,” said former
colleague Boubacar Bah.
Keita, known universally by his initials IBK, is described variously by
his entourage as generous, irascible and divisive.
He is also surgically precise in his French, prone to using the imperfect
subjunctive — a mode usually only seen in high-flown literature — in his
speeches.
The polls saw the native of Koutiala, a southern city near the border with
Burkina Faso, fight off challenges by no fewer than 23 candidates, some of
whom had served on his cabinet.
On the campaign trail, opponents accused Keita of spending too much time
accepting awards abroad while jihadist and ethnic violence raged in the north
and centre of the country.
“He did not manage to solve the country’s major issues: the return to peace
and the issue of insecurity,” said Abdoulaye Cisse, who supported former
prime minister and poll candidate Modibo Sidibe.
Keita, who had five successive prime ministers during his first term,
waved off criticism.
“There is ‘IBK-bashing’ and ‘Mali-bashing’, which could last for awhile
and to which I pay no heed,” Keita told AFP in a pre-election interview. “Let
me tell you, IBK is not a shrinking violet, he has no reason to be.”
Keita, who also garnered an overwhelming majority in his 2013 election,
maintains that he has helped to stabilise the country in the heart of the
fragile Sahel region.
Mali has been gripped by violence since jihadists exploiting a 2012 ethnic
Tuareg separatist uprising took over key cities in the north.
The extremists were largely driven out in France’s Serval operation
launched in January 2013 — but large stretches of the country remain
lawless, and hundreds have died this year alone in inter-communal violence
and jihadist attacks.
But in the AFP interview the president said Mali faces only “pockets of
violence and remnants of terrorism”, defending Bamako’s “colossal financial
effort” in fighting the unrest.
Speaking to reporters on the return flight from a tour of three African
countries to woo diaspora voters, he said: “There’s no more war-mongering in
Mali today.”
– Rise to the top –
After studying literature in his home country, Senegal and France —
his great-grandfather was a French colonial soldier who died in the Battle of
Verdun in World War I — Keita became an advisor for the EU’s overseas
development fund before heading a development project in northern Mali.
He campaigned against general Moussa Traore, Mali’s former president
ousted in 1991 by a military coup.
He then rose through the ranks under Alpha Oumar Konare, the country’s
first democratically elected president.
As a socialist prime minister between 1994 and 2000, he quelled a series of
crippling strikes, earning a reputation as a firm leader and helping to set
up his landslide election in 2013.
Rumours regularly surface about Keita’s health, which he also dismissed:
“It may surprise a lot of people, but I feel perfectly fine.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1950 hrs