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.
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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.
