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Alpha Oumar KonarAlpha Oumar Konar (born 1946) was the president of Mali for two five-year terms, from 1992 to 2002 and has been chairman of the commission of the African Union since 2003. Captured live on state television, that exit was a classic Konare moment - as the soon-to-be ex-president and his wife walked humbly towards a waiting car, waving and smiling for the cameras, as if really happy to give up the privileges and perks of power. Another media coup - and something for the history books - by an outgoing president who was, after all, a historian. Legacy In his decade as president, the once-lean Mr Konare had grown a good deal stouter and lost a good deal of hair. He had also lost the trust of many Malians who had first elected him in 1992. Konare achieved little in the battle against poverty. It was not that President Konare had ever stopped playing the role of the modest intellectual turned head of state - one day appearing in drab brown suits that he might have worn during his student days in Poland, the next looking every inch the Alhaji that he is, in a magnificent flowing gown or "boubou". Right to the very end of his mandate, he could and would preach for hours about democracy and development and fighting corruption and poverty - all the buzz words and lofty causes that donors and diplomats love to hear from the mouth of a well-behaved African president. But Malians themselves had grown tired of the rhetoric and Mr Konare's contradictions - the disparity between what he said and what he actually did. Even many of those close to him told me they had had enough of his showmanship, his manipulative and divisive politicking, and his grand-standing on the international stage as Africa's model democrat. Vision That is not to say that Malians are not pleased and proud to see their former president now on that stage as chairman of the African Union. Even his most strident critics agree that Mr Konare, at the age of 57, has the intellect, experience and the pan-Africanist vision needed to chair the African Union. As chairman of the regional West African body, Ecowas, Mr Konare called for a Federal Republic of West Africa, and he earned worldwide praise for restoring peace to Mali after years of ethnic Tuareg rebellion. He is also remembered as the man who brought the continent's greatest football tournament, the African Cup of Nations, to Mali in 2002 - even if it was on borrowed money. But some Malians are simply relieved that that their former president and his wife, fellow historian Adam Ba Konare, will no longer be hanging about idly in the ex-presidential palace built for them by the Chinese in Bamako - unemployed and nursing unfulfilled ambitions - or grudges. Konar, Alpha Oumar Konar, Alpha Oumar
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