Civilians form anti-junta united front, as ECOWAS suspends Mali
As international pressure mounts on Mali’s coup makers to return to barracks, a coalition of political parties and civil society groups in Bamako has formed a united front to lead strikes and civil disobedience campaigns against the junta.
Created on Sunday, the "The United Front for the Protection of the democracy and the Republic (FUDR)", comprising about sixty political parties and civil society groups, had a mass meeting in Bamako yesterday.
At that forum, they outlined their action plan to take on the coup makers, which includes demanding that they return to barracks and restore constitutional order, as WADR’s Bamako Correspondent Abdoul Karim Ba reports.
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The junta, led by an American trained junior military officer Captain Amadou Sanago, came to power nearly one week ago.
ECOWAS leaders to face junta in Bamako in 48 hours
Mali’s new military junta has given details of a new constitution, as ECOWAS announced the country’s suspension and mandated a delegation of West African leaders to visit Bamako to pressure the coup leaders to restore constitutional rule.
The decision was taken by West African leaders at the end of their emergency summit presided over by ECOWAS current Chairman President Alassane Ouattara in Ivory Coast commercial capital, Abidjan on Tuesday,
WADR’s Abidjan Correspondent says among some six ECOWAS heads of state due to go to Bamako in 48 hours includes Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will to urge the junta leaders to restore democracy.
In a statement at the end of the summit, President Ouattara said:
“We cannot allow this country endowed with such precious democratic instruments, dating back at least two decades, to leave history by regressing," said Alassane Ouattara, the president of Ivory Coast who is the rotating chair of Ecowas.
“It's why Mali needs to immediately return its democratic institutions to normal…This position is non-nnegotiable,” the ECOWAS Chairman added.
As the sub-regional leaders were closing their extraordinary summit in Abidjan last evening, the coup leaders in Mali were on state television pledging that the new constitution would guarantee free speech and movement.
But they stopped short of saying whether the deposed government of President Amadou Toumani Toure would be reinstated or when they will restore constitutional order and return to the barracks.
Last Thursday’s coup first started as a mutiny by soldiers demanding that the government gave troops adequate logistics and support to fight the MNLA rebels in northern Mali.
Ousted President Toure, a retired General, was nearly at the end of his second and final term and was due to leave power after election that was slated for next month, April.
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