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Moroni (Comoros) (AFP) – Azali al-Asoumani, who took over as African Union president for the next 12 months, loves power and has not hesitated to jail opponents or change laws to stay in power.
Publication of: change:
2 minutes
The 64-year-old leader of the Comoros, a small Indian Ocean archipelago with fewer than 1 million people, will succeed Senegal’s Macky Sall as the continent’s rotating leader.
Assomani is among more than a dozen sub-Saharan African leaders who have sought to extend their tenures through constitutional reforms in recent decades.
Colonel Assomani, a former army chief of staff, first came to power in a 1999 coup, one of the many military takeovers that have rocked the islands since independence from France in 1975.
In 2002, he won the presidential election of the Union of Comoros. The Union of Comoros consists of three semi-autonomous islands, each with an independent president.
He was involuntarily handed over to civilians in 2006 under a new constitution that established a rotating presidential system among the three islands of the Union: Gran Comore, Anjouan and Moheli.
He then retired to farming before returning to politics and winning re-election in a 2016 vote marred by violence and allegations of fraud.
Assomani previously told diplomats in the capital Moroni that leaving power was a “mistake” that should not be repeated.
In 2019, he once again turned public opinion after persuading Comorians to vote in a controversial referendum in favor of extending the presidential term from one five-year term to two and rotating between the three islands. We conducted a survey to study.
The change shocked the fragile balance of power established in 2001, which sought to end the separatist crisis on Anjouan and Mohéli and stop an endless cycle of coups.
It then won a 2019 poll with nearly 60 percent of the vote, a result rejected not only by opposition parties but also by many observers.
Since then, critics have accused Assoumani of creeping authoritarianism.
Two months ago, his chief rival and predecessor, Ahmed Abdallah Sanbi, was sentenced to life in prison for high treason for selling passports to stateless people in the Gulf.
Mahamoudou Ahmadah, a lawyer and rival in the last presidential election, sees his appointment as honorary president of the AU as a “failure of the continental organization”.
“Only an African dictator who has no regard for his own people could be happy about this appointment,” he said, adding that Assomani is suppressing dissent and “violating human rights in general.” denounced.
But Hamada Mahdi, Mr Assomani’s foreign affairs adviser, said Comoros’ new role was “excellent”.
“It’s clear that a country like ours, with a population of less than 900,000 people, can command the trust of 54 other (African) countries and even major powers,” Madi told AFP. “This is just amazing.”
Born on January 1, 1959, Assoumani trained at the Royal Moroccan Military Academy in Meknes and the Ecole de Guerre in Paris.
He is married and has four children.
© 2023 AFP
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