In the middle of dinner, we got word that the presidential palace was being bombed, signaling that the coup d’etat was here. We had all watched the Malagasy people’s anger at President Marc Ravalomanana grow through a series of tragically violent demonstrations that helped propelled a 34-year-old former disk jockey turned mayor into power. This would be my last night in Madagascar. It was spent with fellow American volunteers in an Indian restaurant in Antananarivo, the charming, if off-beat, capital city of the impoverished island nation I had called home for 21 months. For many of us, this was the end of an incredible journey; we had been living among Malagasy people in small villages all over the island, experiencing the fomba fiainana Malagasy (Malagasy way of life) we had all grown to love. We were leaving a place out of step with the rest of the world. And we would miss all the ways it was different: the singularity of the landscape (the enormous and other worldly Baobab trees are a prime example); the people who in the face of extreme poverty show so much joy for the simple things in life; the persistent attitude that life is not to be rushed but lived. Many times, life here seems utterly atavistic, an island not only out of step, but out of time. I remember passing a single traveler on a back country road, a man in tattered clothes, with a face emotionless yet clearly showing the utter exhaustion of a day of hard manual labor, a homemade shovel resting on his shoulder. It was as if I had walked into a lost world.
Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP
It turned out that the bombs were a rumor. Like much of the information we were getting it wasn’t the truth, but it was near enough. The military had broken through the gates of the presidential palace and fired symbolic shots into the empty building. The then president, a dairy baron and wealthy businessman, Marc Ravalomanana was not there (the “presidential palace” is an office, not a residence). He was hiding in the sprawling presidential mansion outside of the capital. The military’s act of storming the presidential palace told the world that the then mayor of Antananarivo Andry Rajoelina had the military and the country. He had put the finishing touches on the coup d’etat he had been the face of for a few short months.
The people of Madagascar, friendly and respectful of tradition, were dealt a blow that night. Their fragile democracy again failed to ensure the peacefully transfer presidential power. Ravalomanana’s presidential win in 2001 was itself the result of a fierce battle between himself (himself the then mayor of the capital Antananarivo) and the former president Didier Ratsiraka. After a long struggle that involved the formation of rival governments in different cities, Ravalomanana took power and Ratsiraka left the country and was later exiled.
Teaching English in the countryside for nearly two years as a volunteer, my day-to-day life was not typically troubled by politics. However, when demonstrations against the president began to ramp up in January of 2009, it was all my friends and co-workers could discuss. I heard firsthand their political hopes and fears. They were hopeful when Ravalomanana became president in 2001. He was seen as a reformer by not just themselves but much of the international community. He was someone who would help them finally break free from the shackles of colonialism and allow Madagascar to fully integrate into the global marketplace. My friends and co-workers, along with their fellow Malagasy, waited. Not much improved in their daily lives. Years passed. And then they grew suspicious and angry at the rumors that Ravalomanana was embezzling federal money; that he had leased their homeland to a Korean corporation; and that he had bought a lavish presidential airplane--complete with a gym--for an absurd sum of money at a time when most Malagasy were starving. They were also suspicious that he would rewrite the constitution to lengthen the term limits on the presidency, a justified fear given the fragile nature of the constitution (former president Ratsiraka rewrote the constitution to just this end). All it took to set off their growing anger was another authority figure to rally behind. Enter Andry Rajoelina, a man who went from high school dropout to successful disk jockey and media magnate, to mayor of the capital and quickly to de facto leader of Madagascar. Here was a man who lived up to his nickname. Rajoelina is commonly referred to as “TGV” or “Andry TGV,” a reference to the high-speed French train.
The faith that TGV’s followers have entrusted to him has not paid dividends. A series of unsuccessful power sharing talks between Ravalomanana and TGV have gone nowhere. TGV’s rule has not be recognized by the international community; one result of which is a freeze on the foreign aid on which Madagascar is so dependent. Now, other former leaders are entering the fray. Looming most ominously is Didier Ratsiraka, the once exiled former president. He has been granted not only a hand in determining the future of Madagascar, but a free pass to return home to a country from which he allegedly stole millions of dollars. The people of Madagascar have a proverb (involving a delightful reference to a cricket) that means Even the tiniest things are shared. Obviously, the key players in the power sharing talks are no longer interested in such proverbial wisdom. None of them seem interested in sharing the fate of this country with its own people. Madagascar needs a government democratically mature and robust enough to check the power of its leaders. This way democracy can grow. When ideas like transparency and governmental checks and balances become reality, then leaders will see that they are bound to the will of the people. However, it seems that a fundamental step to making these ideals a reality is a leader who can put the interests of the people above his or her own. Today there doesn’t seem to be anyone to fill that role. Madagascar represents a familiar African struggle: how to quickly create large-scale democratic institutions in countries where such institutions have not existed. The struggle is not an easy one to watch, as in the case of Madagascar. An already parched people are being driven even further from the springs of true democracy.
It’s part of Malagasy culture to accept your lot in life. One hopes that the Malagasy do not accept their recent history of poor leadership as their fate. True, the country seems trapped and unable to progress, out of step and out of time. Tragedies repeat themselves. Protestors were--on Ravalomanana’s order--shot outside of the presidential palace during the demonstrations that lead to the recent coup d’etat in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the 1991 demonstrations against Ratsiraka, where protestors were also killed by gunfire authorized by the president. One wonders what Rajoelina will do when protestors show up at his door.