DAKAR, Senegal — The plotters behind the coup that toppled the leaders of the West African nation of Mali vowed on Wednesday to hold new elections as they defended the arrest and forced resignation of the country’s democratically elected president.
In an address to the nation early Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the coup plotters asked the many foreign forces that have been trying to stabilize the insecurity-wracked country for years — including United Nations peacekeepers and thousands of French soldiers — to continue supporting Mali.
The plotters said the arrests of the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, and the prime minister, Boubou Cissé, on Tuesday night were justified by years of bad governance, corruption, nepotism and a deteriorating security situation.
“Political patronage, the family management of state affairs, have ended up killing any opportunity for development in what little remains of this beautiful country,” said the spokesman, Ismaël Wague, reading into a microphone from a sheaf of papers. He made the remarks while flanked by his fellow coup leaders, all military men, in uniforms and berets. “Mismanagement, theft and bad governance have become virtues.”
But the coup — which resulted in the deaths of four people — has drawn wide condemnation from a broad array of nations and international bodies, including the African Union, Ecowas (the regional group of West African countries), the United States, France and the United Nations, among others.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Wednesday, “The United States calls on all political and military actors to work toward a restoration of constitutional government.”
The coup happened after more than two months of swelling protests focused mainly on the capital, Bamako. The military mutinied on Tuesday, arresting ministers and the president, and soldiers celebrated with crowds of young people who descended onto Bamako’s streets.
The bodies of four people killed by gunfire and about 15 wounded, all likely hit by stray bullets, were brought into one of the city’s main hospitals, said Elhadj Djimé Kanté, a spokesman for the hospital union. Soldiers were firing in the air throughout the coup, cheered on by crowds of young people.
The former president and his prime minister were taken to Kati military camp in a large military convoy. Mr. Keïta was forced to resign in an appearance on state television.
“For seven years I had the happiness and the joy of trying to straighten out this country,” Mr. Keïta said from a curtained room, his words muffled by a surgical mask. “I don’t want any blood to be shed to keep me in my position.”
The coup leaders, who called themselves the National Commission for the People’s Salvation, made no direct reference to the protest movement, known as the June 5 Movement, that had led ballooning demonstrations over the past two months. The movement’s figurehead, a popular imam in Bamako, Mahmoud Dicko, has not yet spoken about the coup.
Mr. Wague said the military had acted “to prevent the country from sinking,” and called on the country’s civil society to help “create the best conditions for a civil political transition leading to credible general elections.” This would “lay the foundations for a new Mali,” he said.
But skeptical voices were already emerging around the pledges touting a new commitment to democracy in Mali.
“Our democracy was already sick, even very sick, and the recent events — of which the military coup is only the culmination — are a final blow to what remains,” wrote Boubacar Sangaré, a journalist, in an editorial published Wednesday morning.
Bamako’s Independence Square, which had been the scene of jubilation as the military drove their captives through it on Tuesday, emptied out overnight. And by Wednesday morning it was crowded with typical, hooting traffic, although many banks and businesses were closed.
The soldiers announced a nighttime curfew and closed the country’s borders from the inside, while Ecowas, the West African regional organization, closed them from the outside and said that sanctions should be imposed.
Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar and Elian Peltier from London.