Mahmoud Dicko, Malian opposition leader on Wednesday urged people to protest in masses on Friday despite recent government overtures towards the resurgent political opposition in the country.
Dicko accused Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of ignoring tens of thousands of people who had protested and demanded that he resign on June 5.
“He hasn’t learned his lesson, he doesn’t listen to people,” Dicko told local media in his native Bambara. “But this time he will understand”.
His statement comes after Keita announced on Tuesday that he would hold talks on establishing a unity government, in a move apparently intended to appease increasingly vocal opposition critics.
Keita has been under pressure to solve a spiralling security crisis in Mali, which first broke out in the north in 2012.
Violence has since spread to the center of Mali, inflaming ethnic tensions as well as to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger which has left thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Failure in stopping the bloodshed, as well as a flagging economy and a perception of widespread corruption, has fed support for opposition groups in Mali.
