Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, the president who promised to rebuild Mali – Le Monde

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, also known by his acronym “IBK”, former Malian president, died on Sunday January 16, at the age of 76, in his residence in Bamako. The man who devoted his entire life to politics had been forced, in August 2020, to retire from public affairs, pushed out by putschist soldiers who dealt the coup de grace to a corrupt regime, violently contested in the street for several months. .

Physically weakened by a cardiovascular accident that occurred only a few weeks after his forced departure, “IBK” had since disappeared from the public scene. Silent behind the high walls of his villa in the Bamako district of Sebenikoro, far from the hopes of renewal he had borne eight years earlier when the country had just escaped the abyss into which jihadist groups promised to throw it.

“IBK” probably dreamed of a more peaceful moment to finally gain access to the supreme power that had eluded him for ten years. In July 2013, his presidential victory with nearly 78% of the vote had suffered no challenge. It concluded an electoral campaign during which he managed to present himself as the man of the refoundation of a moribund Malian state.

He is, however, a pure product of the Malian political seraglio. As early as 1992, his name appeared in the organization chart of the presidency as diplomatic adviser to Alpha Oumar Konaré, a civil society candidate who had just been elected to head the Malian state. The following year, he was appointed ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire, before the big leap: foreign minister, then prime minister, a position he held from 1994 to 2000, a record in Bamako. If he then fails twice in the presidential election (in 2002 then 2007) – he will still be elected to the perch of the National Assembly – he refines his stature as a statesman.

In 2013, Malians are waiting for a saviour, a providential man to get them out of chaos. “IBK” promises them to be that one. When he entered the presidential race in the summer of 2012, the country was barely recovering from a military coup. Above all, Mali is torn, cut in two and threatens to implode. The Malian north is under the yoke of armed Tuareg independence groups (familiar with the Malian political landscape) associated for the occasion with more recent jihadist movements linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

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