In Mali, barely handed over to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, the “Charter for Peace, Unity and National Reconciliation” is being rejected by ex-rebels and the political opposition says it ignores all its content.
It’s on Tuesday, June 20 that the mediator of the Republic, Baba Hakib Haidara, handed over the “Charter for Peace, Unity and National Reconciliation” to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. At the end of the National Peace Conference, held between the end of March and the beginning of April, the charter had not been approved. The Malian authorities had decided that the inter-Malian dialogue would serve as a basis for the charter, which according to the chairman of the peace conference Baba Hakib Haidara, “will be elaborated in a consensual way”.
The charter, drafted by a special commission set up less than two months ago under the aegis of Baba H. Haidara, appears as a crowning achievement of the conference, “a strategic option to which there can be no alternative and for which we are ready to make all concessions, because it is the only one that guarantees the sustainability, stability, cohesion and capacity of our nation to restore its greatness, dynamism and qualitative contribution to the world” said President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, speaking at the handover ceremony.
Disagreement
The handover ceremony was boycotted by the Azawad Movements Coalition (CMA), which cracked a statement to reject “this charter to which it cannot in any way commit to in its current format”. Ilad Ag Mohamed, spokesman for the CMA, explained that the text did not take into account the recommendations that the ex-rebels had made and that it would be the same document presented during the consultative missions. Among the reasons for the rejection, he adds, is the question of the Azawad: “There are maneuvers to dilute it, and we are going straight to bury it. There was no consensus”. On the part of the Malian government, however, this is a settled matter. “It is a posture, they have mandated people for the drafting of the charter. The Agreement which foresees the peace conference says that Azawad cannot be a State project”, says this former member of the Organizing Committee of the Peace Conference, having requested anonymity.
Since the negotiations in Algiers, there has been no consensus on this issue. That is why, says Ilad Ag Mohamed, “Article 5 of the Agreement says that the discussions are continuing and that is why there was the peace conference. For the CMA, the name does not refer to a political project calling into question the integrity of the State. It is not a State in a State. But we made recommendations that were not taken into account”. For him, “it is a consensual document that must be deposited”.
The opposition, for its part affirms that it has not been “in any way associated with the drafting of the charter”. “You have a charter for reconciliation and national unity that is produced in sectarianism and exclusion”, denounces Tiébilé Dramé, president of the Parena opposition party. Yet the leader of the Republican opposition, Soumaïla Cissé, responded to the invitation of Mali’s presidency, while he did not know, adds Dramé, “anything of the content of the charter”.
Boubacar Sangaré