A Malagasy commenter speaks on the coup

Posted by Sappho on October 19th, 2009 filed in Africa news and blogwatch

Earlier, I promoted Hector’s comment on Madagascar to a post because, though my position is anti-coup on general principle (I think the African Union’s anti-coup policy is a good one), Hector’s been following the situation in Madagascar more than I have, and I think there’s value in reading takes of people more closely interested in the situation there (even if such takes may have their own biases). Now Malagasy commenter John Bogen has left a comment taking issue with Hector’s, so I’m promoting his comment to a post as well.

Hello Lynn,

Very glad I found your page and the re-cap of events (past & present) here in Madagascar. Thank you.

But I must take exception with Hector’s ‘assessment’. I hope people will not be taken in by his words without doing their own balanced research. His comments are only comments and not facts. For instance, perhaps it means something that international observers declared the 2006 election as fair. With the exception of the French, of course.

To be fair Ravalomanana is not a perfect President but I challenge Hector to name one perfect president in any country of the world. But Ravalomanana is still the duly elected President of our country.

Putting that aside for the moment a number of important questions must be asked:

~ Is a coup a legitimate way to change government?

~ If so, does that mean that Hector supports the brutal dictator Rajoelina?

~ Where did the backing come from to bring Rajoelina to power? It was certainly not a ‘popular’ movement.

~ Should Madagascar have a democratic government or a dictatorship?

~ Were the dark days as a colony of France or with D Ratsiraka the “good old the days”?

~ Should Madagascar once again become a colony of France?

~ Would is be best for D Ratsiraka to return?

~ The majority of the countries of the world (with the exception of France) reject the present dictatorship that controls Madagascar at this time.

~ Cost of the Coup: In terms of global assistance our very poor country given the present situation will loose approximately 1 billion US dollars over the next of the next 3-5 years.

~ The cost in terms of the suffering of the Malagasy people is evident everyday. No work, no food, no freedom, crime on the rise, brutal police & army actions, and forests disappearing along with our future…

~ Where would you have us go from here? Coup upon coup forever?

I have only one piece of this that I’m going to comment on, and that’s, “Is a coup a legitimate way to change government?” I can, if I try, imagine really rare cases where the right response to a coup might be to accept the legitimacy of the new government right away. I’m thinking here of, oh, the hypothetical where one of the various army officer plots to assassinate Hitler had actually succeeded. But that extreme is far from the normal coup case, and it doesn’t seem to me that the coup in Madagascar matches that extreme; my impression is that, if Ravalomanana were to be removed from power, the constitution provided for means to do that, and that the removal that actually took place wasn’t constitutional (plus, however good or bad a President he was, he doesn’t sound Hitler-level bad).