The interest groups that helped Touré into the presidency want their reward
The man who once said 'only an idiot' would want to be Mali's head of state was confirmed as President on 23 May after two rounds of voting (AC Vol 42 No 19 & Vol 43 No 9). The charismatic ex-General Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) took 65 per cent of the votes cast by less than 20 per cent of the registered electors. He espouses economic reform, political openness and human rights, in a country brutalised by the corrupt rule of another general, Moussa Traoré, from 1976 till 1991, when ATT, then head of the paratroop battalion, arrested the President and set up an interim government to hold free elections. ATT now says he is prepared to release Traoré, who was convicted in 1992 of grand corruption and human rights abuses.
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