New President Takes Office
allAfrica.com
NEWS
June 8, 2002
Posted to the web June 8, 2002
By Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
Washington, DC
Amadou Toumani Toure has been sworn in as the new president of Mali, during
a ceremony in the capital Bamako Saturday attended by 11 other francophone
African leaders. Making democratic history, Malians witnessed for the first
time one constitutionally elected leader handing power to another duly
elected president.
Toure, 53, known by his initials ATT, won the May presidential election,
taking 65 percent of the vote in the second-round run off. He replaces the
outgoing president, Alpha Oumar Konare, 56, who has served the maximum two
five-year terms allowed by the constitution. After ten years in office,
Konare stepped down on Saturday, handing back power to the former coup
leader and soldier, ATT, who was interim head of state during a one-year
democratic transition in Mali from 1991-1992.
As he took the oath of office and raised his right hand, ATT told an
assembled audience of about 3,000, including nine Supreme Court judges, "I
swear before God and the people of Mali to uphold the republican regime, to
respect and ensure respect for the constitution and the law".
In his inaugural speech, the new president, wearing a white 'boubou,'
said "My ambition for Mali is to ensure the well-being of each and every
one of you". He pledged to practice "good governance" and to "consolidate
peace and security" in Mali, as well as promote "sub regional cooperation".
The formal swearing-in at the Congress Palace was preceded by another
ceremony at the presidential palace at Koulouba in the capital. There,
Konare saw his successor settled in, before making his departure from the
place that has been his home for the past ten years. The outgoing and
incoming presidents posed for the cameras, before holding a private forty-
minute meeting.
ATT then accompanied his predecessor to the entrance of the presidential
residence to see him off. Konare told awaiting reporters "I am not at all
sad. I am a free man".
Dozens of Konare's supporters shouted his name 'Alpha, Alpha, Alpha', as he
left Koulouba, to attend a special prayer session "for the success" of the
new head of state.
The ex-president is widely believed to have tacitly supported ATT, who
stood as an independent candidate in the election. The move prompted a
bitter response from Soumaila Cisse, the official candidate of Konare's
governing Alliance for Democracy in Mali, ADEMA, party who claimed he had
been betrayed by Konare.
After winning a contested first round presidential poll in April, ATT also
received the backing of a number of influential political parties, whose
interests he will now have to satisfy.
ATT became the hero of millions of Malians when he toppled the unpopular
regime of General Moussa Traore in 1991 and handed back power to the
elected civilian government of Konare a year later, after multiparty
elections. ATT also earned the praise and respect of his neighbours and the
West for proving that not all African soldiers necessarily clung to power.
Traore has spent the past 11 years in detention for "political and economic
crimes," but he received a presidential pardon last week, one of the
President Konare's last acts of before leaving office.
ATT has pledged to unite Malians and fight against poverty and corruption
in the vast Sahelian nation, which ranks among the poorest in the world.
The military general-turned-president says he is aware of the "immense"
task that lies ahead of him.
On hand to witness ATT's inauguration were the presidents of Burkina Faso,
the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d'Ivoire, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.
Following the swearing-in, ATT laid a wreath at Independence Square and
lunched with the visiting leaders.
A number of the presidents were expected to head to the Senegalese capital,
Dakar, to help mediate in planned Madagascar peace talks. President
Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal is set to host the rival leaders of Madagascar
for the second time since April to try to end more than six months of
political deadlock on the Indian Ocean island. An agreement signed by both
veteran President Didier Ratsiraka and Marc Ravalomanana, who was
controversially sworn in as president for a second time in May, has not
been implemented.
Copyright © 2002 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved. Distributed by
AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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