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This is coming after the Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, resigned Wednesday after being detained in a coup launched by mutinous troops.

But the man who won election in a landslide in 2013 and was re-elected five years later was left flailing by jihadist and inter-ethnic violence that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Snail-paced political reforms, a flagging economy, decrepit public services and schools, and a widely shared perception of government corruption also fed anti-Keita sentiment, driving tens of thousands of protesters into the streets.

The 75-year-old was until this week able to shrug off criticism from a divided opposition, partly relying on support from the international community, which has seen him as a bulwark against the jihadist threat.

But the coronavirus pandemic and the kidnapping of opposition leader Soumaila Cisse by jihadists in March made severe inroads into Keita’s standing.

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The political veteran known as IBK is described variously by his entourage as generous, irascible and divisive.

The son of a civil servant, Keita was born in the southern industrial city of Koutiala, the declining heartland of cotton production.

After studying literature in Mali, 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 adviser 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 — when he finally ascended to the presidency after losing runs in 2002 and 2007.

He had campaigned as a unifying figure in his fractured country, belying his tough-talking reputation. Keita was re-elected in 2018, defeating Cisse.

Rumours regularly surface about Keita’s health, which he has also dismissed: “It may surprise a lot of people, but I feel perfectly fine.”

[AFP]

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