Provisional Consultative Assembly

In North Africa, where most of the population had been gained at the expense of Pétain and Vichy and where the administration, the army, the censors and the press were full of Pétainists, Charles de Gaulle and the French Committee of National Liberation were frequently challenged by British and American diplomats about their legitimacy as local representatives.

Lists and directories drawn up according to the minutes of the Assembly[2][1] registered deaths, as well as new or departing members[clarify], which makes it difficult to ascertain the exact number of delegates present[5] in Algiers until July 1944.

Thus, even though it was composed of appointed members and was purely consultative, the assembly demonstrated great independence, as well as a strong capacity for criticism and pressure on the CFLN.

[5]: 100–102 [6][clarification needed] In his speech, de Gaulle gave the body his imprimatur, as providing a means of representing the people of France as democratically and legally as possible under difficult and unparalleled circumstances, until such time as democracy could once again be restored:[6][5]: 100–102 It would be futile, in the unprecedented circumstances in which the country finds itself at present, to seek a historical precedent for the creation of the Consultative Assembly, or legislative texts that could provide it with a strictly legal basis.

That is why, although democracy can only be restored in its rights and forms in a liberated France, the Committee of National Liberation deemed it necessary, as soon as events permitted, to give to the provisional public authority as democratic a character as possible by calling for a Consultative Assembly to inform and support it, where representatives of the National Resistance stand side by side with elected representatives of the people, all with a qualified mandate.As an indication of the importance he attached to it, de Gaulle participated in about twenty sessions of the Consultative Assembly in Algiers.