Raw deal

I just finished going through some of the updates for the day and found an article from TopMada indicating just how much power Ravalomanana and any other person that is part of this agreement will have. Of course, the information is coming from just one source, but at the same time, I would think that getting the information about the agreement would be very difficult so there could be some validity to this. Here are the details:

While representatives of the movement mouvance Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka have not reappeared on the table meeting of the International Contact Group and the charter proposed by the – has not yet been the subject of discussion, propose its HAT own charter. A charter that supports the existing transition, with some changes in the government and parliament. And the HAT will according to its charter the majority in all institutions. Andry Rajoelina remains President, Monja Roindefo remains Prime Minister, the number of ministers will be raised to 29, the 22 ministers for the HAT and the remaining 7 to distinguish between the movement Ravalomanana, Ratsiraka and Albert Zafy. The lower house will be replaced by a congress made up of 128 representatives of the HAT, 30 representatives from each of the three movements mentioned above and 7 seats for civil society. The Senate is replaced by members of the HAT (other than the government), a body that will consist of 44 members present with 10 former senators.The charter proposed by the HAT proposes the cancellation of all the facts and decisions of administrative and judicial for political affairs between 2002 and 2008 and thus give an amnesty to former President Ratsiraka and his supporters. As this deadline is not the year 2009, supporters of Ravalomanana imprisoned during the crisis, Ravalomanana and will not benefit from the amnesty if the charter is adopted.

If it turns out to be true, which I believe it to be, then we have mislead again into thinking that there would be some sort of valid and peaceful resolution to this problem. There is no doubt that if this information is true, then talks are as good as off and Andry Rajoelina’s hopes of legitimizing his government dashed.

It would also prove again to everyone how good the HAT is at misinforming everyone. We have been misinformed on the peace talks, hoping that there would be some peaceful resolution. We have also been misled in recent days on how is talks with Senagalese president Abdoulaye Wade had gone. He had come back to Madagascar of course touting that he had ‘personally explained’ his situation to Wade and that Wade had accepted the HAT as a legitimate government:

Rajoelina explained to Wade the situation prevailing in Madagascar, which was contradicted what had been reported on the media and that had been said by Ravalomanana.”Senegal has always been a friend and brother of Madagascar, it has always been there when Madagascar had problems like what happened in 2002,” Rajoelina said in Dakar.

This of course must have been information leaked out by the HAT from Tana some time after the meeting as it seems to have only been picked up by Xinhuanet. But now we are seeing growing reports that Abdoulaye Wade did not say anything close to what has been reported initially. Wade agrees with the AU and states that he should stick to whatever resolution is being pushed by the AU:

According to the document,”President Abdoulaye Wade told him he wanted a facilitator and not a judge and by definition could take sides in a conflict. He advised him to pursue his action in the process initiated by the international community to the establishment of the transitional charter which should lead to transparent elections, free and democratic.””The President Wade has especially recommended never to depart from the position of the African Union and the international community to express its desire for a happy ending the current crisis solely on the profile of the Malagasy people ‘ ‘, says the press release.

This is pretty far from being accepted I would say, and accepted or not, it did not justify the hijacking of a plane for his own reasons so that he could have this meeting whether it proved to be fruitful or not. There were a lot of angry people who had to waste an extra 8 hours just waiting for Andry Rajoelina to do his business, pretty self-righteous I would say:

The passengers arrived around 6:00 pm at Ivato airport to check-in to Paris and Marseille. The flight was supposed to take-off at 10:30 pm but Andry Rajoelina arrived at the airport and forced the Air Madagascar ground operator of to reroute the fight to Dakar.It took three hours for Dakar airport to give authorization. The flight took off about 1:00 AM (next day) in the morning and headed to Dakar with 200 passengers.

As the flight was originally expected to arrive in Marseille on Thursday morning at 10:00 AM, family and friends had to wait for more than 8 extra hours.

So it looks like we are once again back where we had started with no negociations or an end to the crisis in the near future. The only thing that seems to be picking up some steam is the legalist movement in Madagascar, with reports from TopMada that today will be a deciding day on things to come:

Saturday’s decision will certainly relate to the conduct to be followed for the remainder of the event legalists. A major decision that will severely after the speeches of President Ravalomanana and the withdrawal of its representatives at the table meeting with the International Contact Group.

It remains to be seen what is going to happen regarding Marc Ravalomanana’s return to Madagascar. But with all the recent events, it seems that this time there may be a possibility of him doing it. Especially considering the recent raid on the Ivato airport by the army when they had thought he was on a plane. The HAT are definitely scared and are increasingly getting stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hopefully this will lead to their end, but who knows.

It also appears that the big Saudi agreement could have just been lip service and was something manufactured by the HAT to ease tension on them about their finances:

The High Authority of transition (NDT), led by Andry Rajoelina, who took power in Madagascar in March 2009, gave a lot of sparkle to the visit of Saudi investors. This failed to silence the many questions about “real godsend.” Madagascar is suspended from the African Union, which were ultimately not held its next summit of Heads of State and Government. new regime is not recognized by any government. The signature of this Convention would be a great victory for the new regime.Enough for many people to handling, staged. The group is not well known. The representative of the International Monetary Fund on the island, Pierre van den Boogaerd, questioned about it, says: “Personally, I do not know.”

There was also surprised with a delegation of three persons only, traveling by scheduled flight from Kenya Airways, without bodyguard.

Maybe they are up to their misleading tricks again? Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will see more of the truth coming to light and an end to the crisis.