Madagascan crisis revives old independence ghosts

AFP 27.04.2002

ANTANANARIVO: Threats by Madagascar's regional governors to form independent states should President Didier Ratsiraka finally be forced from power have revived old independence ghosts from the country's coastal regions.

Governors in the southwestern province of Toliara and the northern province of Antsiranana warned Friday they would declare independence if a recount of last December's presidential elections goes against Ratsiraka.

The High Constitutional Court (HCC) is set to rule on Monday on the disputed results of the election, which put opposition candidate Marc Ravalomanana ahead of Ratsiraka.

The HCC said in January that Ratsiraka had won 40.89 percent of the December 16 vote and his challenger Marc Ravalomanana 46.21 percent, and that a second round run-off was therefore necessary.

But Ravalomanana said the results had been rigged, insisting he had gained the absolute majority needed to win the presidential vote outright.

After weeks of massive demonstrations in the capital, in February he declared himself head of state and set up a parallel government, sparking a major political crisis on the Indian Ocean island.

"The post-electoral crisis has only awakened, in a brutal and unexpected way, the old independence dreams of the major ethnic regions of the country," the daily Express newspaper said in an editorial Saturday.

Madagascar's six provinces were created by French colonialists in 1895 along, roughly speaking, ethnic and economic lines.

Since independence in 1960, any idea of partition or provincial autonomy was denounced by the central authorities.

However, a measure of decentralisation had been established by the early 1990s, and Ratsiraka, when he returned to power in 1996, made provincial autonomy his new political project.

In a 1998 referendum, a constitutional reform which gave autonomy to the provinces was adopted by 50.56 per cent of voters.

The economic blockade of Antananarivo by Ratsiraka's supporters since the beginning of the crisis "has no other goal, beyond the electoral conflict, than to anchor in a final way the autonomy of the provinces," a local political observer noted.

Independence wishes of the provinces have little chance of being realised. A confidential document of the director general of taxation indicates that except for Antananarivo and Toamasina, which contains the main port of the island, no province can live without substantial financial support from the central treasury.

Even those seeking the "secession" of, for example, Nosy Be, the tourist island on the northwestern coast in the province of Antsiranana, would be hard pressed to survive without putting the squeeze on the main economic operators there, mostly foreigners.

To do this, however, would be to threaten the very economic lifeline currently sustaining the island.

Residents of Madagascar Saturday were anxiously awaiting the return to the island of Ratsiraka, who has been in France since striking a deal with Ravalomanana in Senegal earlier this month.

The outgoing president was expected back Sunday, but similar expectations in the past week have come to nothing.

One of his close advisers said Saturday Ratsiraka had no doubt been "troubled" by the declarations of the governors, but that the threats had at least served the purpose of alerting Ravalomanana to the risks involved should he be declared president on Monday.