The West African regional grouping, Ecowas has been keeping a keen eye on the unfolding events around talks to resolve Mali’s protracted political crisis.
Five leaders from the region have been meeting President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and members of a vociferous opposition baying for his blood with a view to resolving the crisis.
IBK’s detractors led by the abrasive Imam Mahmoud Dicko have been making their demand clear in violent street protests, putting Bamako and the rest of the country effectively under siege.
Their demand then and now following Thursday’s talks is for him to step down as the only means to bring back sanity to Mali’s political landscape.
But as decoding the diplomatic wording about the outcome of the talks suggests, both sides continue to dig in their heels, refusing to countenance the other side’s demand.
IBK and his political protégés have no wish for him to step down given that he is just two years into his second five-year term as Mali’s sixth president.
Dicko and his legion of street protesters cannot fathom a future of Mali with IBK as their president, accusing him of corruption, cronyism and lethargic tendencies in the war against jihadists still roaming the vast country.
It is feared within Ecowas that both sides are thus poised to return to the old battle lines drawn in Mali’s desert sand weeks ago when protesters engaged security forces in deadly clashes over who blinks first.
For days on end Bamako and other cities in Mali resembled a war zone where smouldering wreckage of cars littered its chaotic streets.
It was left for Ecowas to mediate.
But its mediation team led by former Nigerian leader Goodluck Jonathan admitted failing.
The bloc had hoped that another throw of the dice by the regional quintet of Muhammadu Issoufou (Niger), Macky Sall (Senegal), Nana Akufo-Addo (Ghana), Mohammadu Buhari (Nigeria) and Alassane Ouattara (Ivory Coast) would succeed where its had failed.
But if the words of Issoufou in his capacity as the current chair of Ecowas are anything to go by, more mediation is required, the strategy being to engage both sides away from the streets long enough for total calm to be restored.
A middle ground it has espoused and touted at the first mediation effort for a power-sharing deal was rejected by the opposition determined that the president must cave in.
IBK had first ruled out this power-sharing idea as a precondition for protesters to disengage but gave in after pressure from Ecowas which is very reluctant to see him go.
In fact Issoufou made the position of Ecowas clear on IBK’s future as Mali’s leader.
He bluntly said Keita’s departure is out of the question given his position as the democratically elected president of Mali with three years to go before his term ends.
“This is a red line for ECOWAS governed by a protocol on democracy and good governance (which) provides that there is no unconstitutional change of power” he told journalists after emerging from marathon talks with both sides of the crisis divide.
Ecowas is pinning hopes on more talks and an eventual outcome that would allow Mali to deal with the twin wars of an eight-year insurgency and a coronavirus pandemic gaining ground nationwide.
WN/as/APA