A dozen Malian political organizations on Sunday rejected the five-year transition period proposed the day before by the government to the Economic Community of West African States.
Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said Saturday on public television that he had presented President Nana Akufo Addo of Ghana, current chairman of ECOWAS, with a five-year extension of the transition, starting January 1.
The National Consultations on Refoundation, held from December 11 to 30, recommended a transition period of between six months and five years, without making a decision.
In a press release issued on Sunday, the “Framework of exchange of political parties and groupings for a successful transition” said that this deadline, in addition to “violating the Charter of the transition, has not been discussed in Mali and can in no way be a deep aspiration of the Malian people.
“Therefore, the framework rejects this unilateral and unreasonable schedule,” he added.
The “Cadre d’échange”, a coalition of parties, had already announced its refusal to take part in the National Conference on Refoundation. It had expressed this refusal on November 19 to Colonel Assimi Goïta, in power since the putsch of August 18, 2020.
West African leaders will hold an extraordinary summit on Mali on January 9 in Accra. On December 12, they had demanded February elections in Mali and threatened to impose additional sanctions in January without a commitment from the Malian authorities to hold elections on February 27, 2022.
But the Malian authorities notified ECOWAS that they would be unable to hold presidential and legislative elections in February 2022, as the junta had previously pledged.