Moussa Traoré

Moussa Traoré, born in 1936, head of state of Mali (1968-1969) and president of Mali (1969-1991). Traoré was born to peasant farmers in Kayes, a region in western Mali. He attended the Kati Cadets School and, after joining the French army, the Fréjus Military College in France. In 1964 he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Malian army, serving as an instructor at the Kati Military Inter-Services School. In November 1968 Traoré seized power, establishing the Comité Militaire pour la Libération Nationale (CMLN, or Military Committee for National Liberation) as the ruling body. The CMLN named Traoré head of state and, in September 1969, president. Enduring frequent coup attempts and antigovernment demonstrations, Traoré consolidated his power during the 1970s and 1980s, dismissing many of his ministers and, in 1974, drafting a new constitution establishing a single-party civilian state. In elections in 1979 and 1985, Traoré, the sole candidate of the only legal political party, The Democratic Union of Malian People (founded in 1976), was elected president. During the 1980s Traoré moved cautiously toward liberalizing the economy and the political process. He restored economic relations with France; courted Western investment and aid while maintaining ties with the Eastern bloc; and sponsored a series of public forums on the future of democracy in Mali while resisting calls for a multiparty state. In March 1991, after using government security forces to violently repress massive antigovernment demonstrations and strikes for four months, Traoré was overthrown and imprisoned by a group of junior military officers. In February 1993 Traoré and several of his ministers, convicted of murder for their violent repression of the 1991 demonstrations, received death sentences. These sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by Malian president Alpha Oumar Konaré in December 1997. In early 1999 Traoré and his wife were sentenced to death after they were convicted of charges of embezzlement relating to Traoré’s presidency. In September Konaré commuted these sentences to life imprisonment as well.