مالي: نصراني مورموني يسعى لتولي الرئاسة عقب انتهاء الحرب

خبر من مصادر إنجليزية.

أكد النصراني المورموني "نيانكورو ياه سماكي" - زعيم حزب الحراك المدني والوطني في "مالي" - أنه يسعى للوصول لسدة الحكم في "مالي" في انتخابات الرئاسة في فترة ما بعد الحرب، وذلك لتبدأ مرحلة جديدة من تاريخ "مالي" ذات الغالبية المسلمة.

وأشار في لقائه بشبكة "كرستين ساينس مونيتور" أن نصرانيته لن تشكل عائقًا، بل دعمًا له في الانتخابات، خاصةً مع توليه منصب عمدة مدينة "أويليسيبوجو".

وأكد - بعد عودته من رحلة لجمع التبرعات والدعم من ولاية "كاليفورنيا" الأمريكية - أنه لولا التدخل الفرنسي لظل الإسلاميون يسيطرون على ثلث "مالي"، والتي يرغب في جعله دولة مختلفة عن سابق عهدها؛ المصدر: شبكة الألوكة.

يرجى الإشارة إلى المصدر عند نقل الخبر - شبكة الألوكة.

الخبر من مصدره الأصلي:

Mormon makes bid to lead Muslim-majority Mali out of post-war chaos

The convert, who discovered Mormonism while working with a Utah-based charity, developed a solid reputation after turning around his Muslim-majority town as mayor.

Capitalizing on those qualities, Niankoro Yeah Samaké hopes to be elected the first Mormon president of Mali, a mostly-Muslim country that was recently controlled partly by Islamist extremists.

Inside his home, a low brick building, Mr. Samaké has lunch with his family as a courtyard fills with admirers. Outside, scrawny dogs and scattered chickens run for cover as crowds of singing and dancing men and women fill the sandy street, before they enter.

“A vote for Yeah is a vote for a new Mali,” declares Bakary Diallo, a youth leader for Samaké’s Party for Civic and Patriotic Action standing at the door.

The ever-smiling Samake goes into politician mode, shaking the hand, sometimes twice, of every single youth before gently ushering them back into the street.

Two weeks ago Samake landed in Mali after a successful fundraising campaign in California. Along with the compulsory suitcases stuffed with gifts for his family, he carried with him a large check from a famous hair product magnate to help fund his presidential run.

Samake will need the help. He faces the challenge of trying to rebuild a nation that in the last 14 months has witnessed both a military coup and an Islamist insurgency.

If not for a French-led intervention in January, Islamists would still control two-thirds of the country.

And he is also a Mormon candidate in a country that is 95 percent Muslim. Samake and his family of four are Mali’s only Mormons.

”I was elected mayor in Ouéléssébougou, a town where 90 percent of the population is Muslim,” Samake tells the Monitor as cheering crowds leave his home. “My faith is not a problem! In fact it will help me win the elections.”

In 2009 Yeah Samaké was running a successful Utah-based charity when he decided to run for mayor in Ouéléssébougou, a town of some 12,000 residents in the southwest corner of Mali.

“When I saw my hometown was failing, just as Mali is now, it came to me I should run for mayor. I could not fail my people then, just as I can’t fail Mali now, when the country finds itself in the worst situation imaginable,” he says about the decision to return to the farming community where he grew up.