Divided Madagascar takes violent turn

Rival presidents, two capitals lead to deadly clashes

By Declan Walsh, Globe Correspondent, 14. April 2002

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar - The three generals sat at the table, tipping cigarette ash into a marble tray while discussing the revolution. Outside, a government had been overthrown. The capital was under siege. Further violence was looming.

No way were they getting involved.

''This must be solved peacefully,'' said Brigadier General Rabarisoa-Ririva. ''There is the constitution, the law. We respect that.'' His superior, Major General Rajaonson, nodded in agreement.

''These politicians are just messing it up,'' said Rajaonson, who like many here uses only one name. ''The army is there to defend people, not to shoot at them.''

The rules of revolution have been turned upside down on Madagascar, an island 250 miles from Mozambique once best known for its rich wildlife and unwieldy surnames, but now the setting for a unique power struggle. Since disputed presidential elections in December, the country has become split. Since a bloodless coup in February, it has two presidents, two capitals, and one divided army whose generals say they prefer talking to fighting.

More remarkably, the schism had occurred with hardly a shot being fired - until now.

On Friday soldiers loyal to the self-proclaimed president, Marc Ravalomanana, launched an attack in the country's second-largest city, Fianarantsoa, on a hilltop fortress held by supporters of the rival president, Didier Ratsiraka. A 76-year-old Canadian Catholic missionary, Roger Morin, was caught in the crossfire and killed. Both sides said they inflicted casualties.

Yesterday, five soldiers were killed and 18 wounded when their truck came under fire as they tried to enter Fianarantsoa to reinforce the governor's defenses, hospital officials said.

Ravalomanana also promised a renewed assault on a ring of barricades that have been strangling the capital, Antananarivo, for months. It is his first military offensive against his opponent since sweeping to power six weeks ago.

''Blocking the roads is an act of criminal violence against our city,'' he said in a recent interview. ''The barricades must come down.''

The attacks mark the replacement of words with guns as the weapon of choice in Madagascar's political standoff. Peaceful resistance is over. The ''velvet revolution'' is drawing to a close.

Ravalomanana, a millionaire businessman who once sold yogurt from the back of a bicycle, enjoyed popular support even before declaring himself president last February.

As mayor of Antananarivo, he reinvigorated the dilapidated city with simple initiatives like collecting the garbage and replacing street lights. The need for such measures highlighted the social corrosion wrought by more than 20 years of rule under Ratsiraka, an old-style African leader who openly enriched his family while the living standards of his people plunged.

During election campaigning, Ratsiraka tried to buy support - once distributing cash to villagers in front of journalists. Ravalomanana built his image using his ubiquitous food company, Tiko, and with the support of the four main Christian churches.

When he failed to win an outright victory, Ravalomanana, 51, said he had been cheated, and hundreds of thousands of his supporters crammed the narrow streets of the capital. In mid-February soldiers overwhelmed by the throng simply stepped aside. The yogurt tycoon was in power, but he has taken on a formidable foe in Ratsiraka, 67, who weathered a similar crisis in the early 1990s.

Since fleeing to the eastern coast, Ratsiraka has declared the port town of Toamasina the new capital, while orchestrating a punishing siege of Antananarivo. Gangs of armed supporters have blown up the bridges around the highland city and ringed it with roadblocks.

The blockade has crippled Antananarivo. Mamy Rasaonaivo, an unemployed man, sat hunkered under the forecourt of one of the city's many deserted gas stations last week, and shook his head. ''Life has become miserable,'' he said.

Factories were laying people off in droves. The minimal fuel available on the black market was too expensive. His family had been going hungry since the staple food, rice, doubled in price.

''At this stage, we have had enough. The barricades must come down,'' he said glumly.

Friday's offensive in Fianarantsoa was the latest step in a rapid escalation of violence. Earlier in the week, mobs attacked and looted the houses of four Ratsiraka officials, including an 88-year-old former prime minister who had to flee in his pajamas. The following day police arrested three Ratsiraka officials. Within hours, two were in the hospital and one was in the morgue, beaten to death.

There also has been a sharp increase in attacks in provinces still controlled by Ratsiraka. At least six Ravalomanana supporters have been killed in attacks that have a tribal dimension - people from the highland Merina tribe are being singled out.

''They told my mother to hire a carpenter to make my coffin,'' said businessman Joseph Yoland, who had fled to the capital from the once thriving but now empty tourist town of Nosy Be.

Amid the tensions, diplomats, most notably from the former colonial power, France, are scrambling to forge a settlement. If that fails, outright civil war is improbable but not impossible, they say. That could mean that some day soon, even Madagascar's reluctant generals could find themselves forced to take sides.