Madagascar
Malagasy stalemate turns bloody

Misanet.com / IPS, 12 April - Both the rival presidential camps of Didier Ratsiraka and Marc Ravalomanana and international observers agree that the current presidential election stalemate cannot continue indefinitely without violence breaking the tension. At least 25 people have now been killed in a three-month standoff that was originally hailed as a peaceful coup staged by presidential contender Ravalomanana, followed by the headstrong but non-violent resistance of incumbent Ratsiraka.

- The UN, OAU [Organisation of African Unity], IOC [Indian Ocean Commission], all saw the violence coming, and they have all attempted to get the two rivals together for talks, says a Swazi diplomat whose duties include service on the island states off Southern Africa's Indian Ocean coast. "They have all failed."

- Now Ravalomanana is talking war talk, he says. "That can be expected from the frustration of being in a cut-off city with no food or fuel," says the diplomat, who feels the ingredients for full-scale civil war are in place.

In a televised address, Ravalomanana introduced a note of militancy largely absent from his previous speeches. "People of bad intent have declared war on the Madagascan nation. We declare that these people are enemies of the nation, and we will hunt them down."

The island state, with its two presidents, each with his own cabinet, a divided army and a split populace, has been virtually shut down since Ravalomanana, who claims to have won an outright majority at Dec 16's presidential election, called a general strike in January. The citizens of the capital Antananarivo observed the strike, where Ravalomanana had been a popular major. At the height of the strike, he held a swearing-in ceremony as president, and appointed a cabinet and defence minister.

Ratsiraka, who has retreated to the port city of Taomasina (Tamatave), his home and political power base, persisted with his call for a runoff election, referring to a national election commission's finding that neither candidate received 50 percent of the vote. 

This week, the foundation of Ratsiraka's argument was significantly weakened when the Madagascar Supreme Court ruled that the legal panel that scrutinised and approved the presidential election laws did a flawed job with numerous irregularities. Ravalomanana's camp celebrated the ruling as a victory.

But the victory appears as empty as the capital's pantries. 

In retaliation for the general strike, former General Ratsiraka, who ruled Madagascar for 20 years, first as the head of a military coup and then as a two-term elected president, ordered a blockade of the capital. Food and gasoline entering the country from Taomasina's port were cut off, and highway barricades manned by Ratsiraka supporters ensured the stoppage of goods.

Ravalomanana, his cabinet ministers now in office and the civil servants following their directives, called off the strike. Ratsiraka did not call off the capital blockade. 

This week, with fuel, sugar and salt supplies depleted, and rice available only on the black market at double the usual price, many shops are shuttered, reports the capital's daily newspaper, Midi Madagascar, which supports Ravalomanana. "I have lived on the island all my life, and there has never been anything like a black market," complained housewife Rita Rakotonirina, 46. 

Attempts by Ravalomanana to utilise two other ports were sabotaged when Ratsiraka loyalists, cutting the highways to the sea, dynamited bridges. Typical of the tit for tat retaliation that characterises the political standoff, Ravalomanana supporters burned the homes of two former ministers from the Ratsiraka government down this week. 

No one died, but reports from around the country broadcast by Madagascan National Radio tell of Ravalomanana supporters killed while attempting to remove highway barricades, and individual Ratsiraka supporters dying in confrontations with the opposition, like former police officer Rolland Rajaonarivelo. 

The circumstances of Rajaonarivelo's death are unclear, but he had been arrested this week with two others, and accused of conspiring to assassinate Ravalomanana's choice for Prime Minister, Jacques Sylla.

As fatalities passed two-dozen, the Indian Ocean Commission's secretary-general Wilfred Bertile repeated the inability of delegates from the UN and OAU to bring both sides together for talks. 

Bertile had hoped to remove both candidates from the frustrating stalemate at home for a meeting at the neighbouring island nation Seychelles. Neither rival cared to go.

No sooner had Bertile left the country - and increasingly difficult journey after Air France cancelled all flights to the island this week, citing security concerns - then Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade invited the candidates to his country for what he described as "peace talks". "This is no longer a political dispute, but a war that requires peace talks," says Miguel Magwagwa, a Mozambique-based political analyst. 

At week's end, neither Ratsiraka nor Ravalomanana have replied to the offer from their sister African Francophone nation, and appear deaf to international appeals for an end to a conflict that has shattered Madagascar's economy. 100,000 jobs have been lost following the closure of businesses and the cessation of industrial production and export shipments. 

The Association of Road Transport Operators and the National Council of Road Carriers called a strike this week. Both truck company owners and truck drivers are protesting unsafe highways, road blockages and three blown up bridges this month. 

But the fact is, there is nothing for the truckers to carry and the loss of the nation's trucking services will have little economic impact. During normal times such a strike would be devastating - or affect the supply of goods. The action seems another exercise in frustration that can only increase tensions in a stand-off where both sides are unwilling to meet, much less compromise.

By James Hall, IPS

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