The President of the Transition’s legislative body, Colonel Malick Diaw, took the opportunity of the opening ceremony to discuss the referendum and the upcoming general elections. He has not forgotten the Army’s successes in the fight against terrorism and Mali’s relations with the rest of the world.
The President of the National Transitional Council (CNT), Colonel Malick Diaw, yesterday presided over the solemn opening ceremony of the April 2023 ordinary session of the legislative body. This session, which will last three months, will examine some thirty bills and proposals. There are also plans for various activities to monitor government action, field missions by the commissions as well as capacity building sessions.
The ceremony recorded the presence of the Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, accompanied by several members of the government, the presidents of the institutions of the Republic, those of the independent administrative authorities and representatives of the diplomatic corps.
The ceremony was marked by the speech of the president of the CNT. For Colonel Malick Diaw, this session opens at a time when our country is seeking to adopt a new Constitution. He hoped that after several previous attempts at modification by previous authorities, this one will be the right one. He will then invite all the living forces of the country, all the socio-political strata and all Malians from the interior as well as those established abroad to appropriate the document and to participate actively and massively in the rest of the validation process. It is, according to him, the constitutional referendum whose new date will soon be fixed after consultation with Aige and all the other electoral actors.
The president of the CNT promised that his institution will do the pleasant duty of accompanying the president of the Transition and the government until the adoption of the new Constitution consecrating the 4th Republic of Mali. According to him, “the whole strategy of popularization of the Constitution should be done under the exclusive authority of the President of the Transition, the sole bearer of the project”.
According to Colonel Malick Diaw, “ECOWAS, endowed with extraordinary temerity” is still at odds with our country. He recalled that at the end of its extraordinary summit on February 19, this organization, despite all the steps taken previously by the Foreign Ministers of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, decided to maintain its sanctions against the three countries.
She even called on the UN, the African Union and all international partners to support the implementation of these decisions on Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. “We do not need a microscope to know that the obscure purpose of the said measures is to continue to seriously harm our states. Fortunately, we are already vaccinated against this type of virus worse than Covid-19, ”lamented the president of the CNT.
However, he will say that these illicit and malicious sanctions inflicted on our countries and our populations in defiance of the root causes that led to the respective transitions, gave them serious food for thought. And in the end, “we can even say a big thank you to ECOWAS for having shown us, through its actions, that we must rely exclusively on ourselves”. This is why Colonel Diaw finds that the new ambition of the authorities of the three countries aimed at uniting their efforts to further strengthen the Bamako-Conakry-Ouagadougou axis is highly salutary.
THE FINAL VICTORY- Regarding the evolution of the security situation in our country, the president of the CNT happily maintained that the Malian Armed Forces are briskly pursuing their offensive pace against armed terrorist groups. According to him, the initiative on the ground with the search, the neutralization of combatants and the destruction of terrorist and criminogenic sanctuaries has become the daily life of our forces. Colonel Diaw is sure that with the new acquisitions of military equipment, the continuous improvement of the air vector as well as the pursuit of the human, material and moral rearmament of the troops, the final victory will be ours.
For the president of the CNT, leading a political transition is never easy. Despite the various turbulent journeys experienced by our country, the Malian Transition is moving calmly towards its original objective of rebuilding Mali and restoring confidence to Malians. He recalled that the April session opens after a very laborious and prolific intersession, marked in particular by two extraordinary sessions.
The first, convened at the request of the government, allowed the adoption of texts relating to territorial reorganization and to make some changes to the electoral law, in particular the deadline for setting up the coordination of the Aige, the advance voting of Armed and security forces, the taking into account of the new territorial reorganization in the organization of elections as well as the institution of the national biometric identity card secured as a voter’s card.
As for the second extraordinary session, it enabled the CNT to perfect its rules of procedure, taking into account in particular the arrival of additional members and the improvement of the functioning of the Institution. According to Colonel Malick Diaw, the intersession was also an opportunity for the CNT to participate in certain statutory activities of interparliamentary organizations and to strengthen its parliamentary diplomacy with Mali’s friends and partners, both bilaterally and multilaterally. .
The opening of the present session coinciding with the month of Ramadan and the last days of Lent for the Catholic Christian community, the president of the CNT denounced the behavior of some of our compatriots who exploit these particular moments of piety to devote themselves to speculation on basic necessities in the markets.
Dieudonne DIAMA