{{Mali’s transitional government prime minister has promised that elections will go ahead in July despite fears that his government is failing to reassert control after the ousting of rebel fighters.}}<\/p>\n
Diango Sissoko, speaking to reporters in Gao on a visit to the region on Thursday, said that there is “no question over the holding of elections in July”.<\/p>\n
“All the necessary steps are being and will be taken,” Sissoko said.<\/p>\n
Sissoko’s visit to Gao was the first by a senior government figure since a French-led campaign in the town, the northern Mali’s largest, in January.<\/p>\n
Some 4,000 French troops, fighting alongside Mali’s army and a regional African force AFISMA, have pushed the rebel fighters back into desert and mountain hideaways.<\/p>\n
With France aiming to cut its military presence to 1,000 soldiers by year-end, the first 120 arrived back in France on
\nThursday.<\/p>\n
Paris is pushing for presidential and legislative elections in three months.<\/p>\n
But, analysts fear that preparations will not be completed by July and warn that a botched election could sow the seeds for further unrest and north-south conflict in the landlocked former French colony.<\/p>\n
{Aljazeera}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Mali’s transitional government prime minister has promised that elections will go ahead in July despite fears that his government is failing to reassert control after the ousting of rebel fighters.}} Diango Sissoko, speaking to reporters in Gao on a visit to the region on Thursday, said that there is “no question over the holding of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-7104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7104"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=7104"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=7104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}