The Union for the Republic and Democracy (French: Union pour la République et la Démocratie, URD) is a political party in Mali.
The party was formed by those who supported Soumaïla Cissé during the 2002 election. Most of its members came from ADEMA, the former ruling party. It is believed they felt betrayed by outgoing President Alpha Oumar Konaré, who supported Amadou Toumani Touré (eventual winner of the 2002 presidential election) against his own party. The MCCDR of Boubacar Karamoko Coulibaly and the PMDR of Abdoul Wahab Berthe joined the URD. Both men are vice-presidents of the URD.
The president of the URD is former prime minister Younoussi Touré.
The party came second in the 2004 municipal elections and has 17 members in the National Assembly, including prominent members such as Mamadou Awa Gassama Diaby of Yelimane, and Baba Oumar Bore of Kita. The party has 114 mayors in Mali including the late Ali Farka Touré of Niafunke and Demba Fane of the fifth district of Bamako.
The URD backed Amadou Toumani Touré for re-election in the April 2007 presidential election. The party, part of the pro-Touré Alliance for Democracy and Progress (ADP), won 34 out of 147 seats in the July 2007 parliamentary election.
Famous quotes containing the words union, republic and/or democracy:
“Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)