Madagascar takes first step on the road back to democracy

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/madagascar-first-step-road-democracy

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It is 4pm in the highland village of Antanifotsy and the Ranaivo family is hard at work, catching the last hour of daylight before heading home. Amid the terraced rice paddies so typical of the central plateaux of Madagascar, they are building a huge kiln, laid with about 15,000 bricks. They hope to finish it today so that they can fire it tomorrow; the bricks should be ready within three days, selling for Ar50 each (about 1p).

For farming families like the Ranaivos, brick-making is a lifeline, an income-generating activity to tide them over the dry winter months. The trouble is, there are many more brick-makers these days than there are brick-buyers.

"There are no jobs so everyone wants to be a brick-maker," said Naina, the head of the family. "People who had gone to Antananarivo [the capital] to find work have had to come back to the village because they can't find anything and they are all making bricks now."

It's not just the brickmakers who are struggling to make ends meet. Since a coup in February 2009, life in Madagascar has become increasingly precarious. The coup, led by Andry Rajoelina against the president, Marc Ravalomanana, was widely condemned by the international community. Sanctions swiftly followed: Madagascar was suspended from the Africa Growth Opportunity Act, which led to the collapse of the textile sector; international aid, which accounted for 75% of the infrastructure budget, was put on hold; and foreign investment stalled.

As a result the economy has nosedived. Some 92% of the population now lives below the poverty line. According to the World Bank, that makes Madagascar the poorest country in the world among those that have not suffered a conflict. For a nation blessed with so many resources – oil, precious stones, iron, coal, uranium, fisheries, agricultural land – it is a damning indictment of its governance.

On Friday, Madagascar will hold its first presidential elections since the coup. The polls are seen as a necessary step out of the crisis, although the Malagasies are under no illusion.

"The only thing we can expect is for Madagascar to stop being seen as a pariah state," said René, who owns a shoe shop in Antsenakely market in Antsirabe, Madagascar's third largest city. "But in terms of real change, I'm sceptical." His fellow stallholders are equally dubious. In the seamstress quarter, Clarisse barely looks up from her clattering sewing machine to answer questions. "The elections won't solve the crisis," she said flatly. "There are too many candidates [33 in total] and they all say the same thing. How can you tell who will be capable of managing the country?"

It is not just the profusion of candidates that is leaving voters perplexed. Cenit, the electoral commission, is replacing the one-candidate-one-ballot-paper system with a new single-ballot paper. With 33 candidates, it is huge (A3 format) and rather daunting for the millions of illiterate voters. The commission is running an education campaign to explain how to use it, but Madagascar is vast, with few roads and a low population density, which makes reaching remote rural areas a tall order.

In Antanifotsy, the Ranaivos say they saw the commission's demonstration on the village TV; Sahondra, Naina's sister-in-law, mimes how the paper must be folded: like a triptych lengthways, before folding it in half and dropping it in the ballot box.

The Ranaivos are relatively lucky to have access to a TV. Their village is located off the RN7, one of the most important (and sealed) roads in the country. And it has electricity. For the millions who live miles from a road, let alone a sealed one, and whose only source of information is a crackling radio, any civic education – electoral campaign, voting procedure or otherwise – is as remote as their location.

On the sand dunes of Andavadoaka, a large fishing village located in the south-west of the country more than 1,000km from Antananarivo, the locals are still in the dark about the polls. "When are they?" asks one lady when questioned about whether she will vote or not.

Life in Andavadoaka was never extravagant before the coup, but people got by. That has changed, says a local notable. The price of rice, the local staple, has nearly doubled while the price of fish, the main commodity along the coast, has remained relatively stable. "This is the main reason people have taken their children out of school," the notable said. "They can't afford to pay any more."

Since 2009, the World Bank and Unicef estimate that the proportion of primary school-aged children out of school has risen from 18% to 25%, totalling 1.5 million. Other public services have suffered too. The state of the roads has gone from bad to dismal, and health services are struggling. Steven Lauwerier, the Unicef representative in Madagascar, said his organisation ran two mother-and-child health campaigns this year. Half of all vaccinations in the country took place during those two weeks. "That means that the campaigns are replacing the health system; normally, they should complement it," he said.

Despite their reservations, most Malagasies say they will vote on Friday. The second round will take place on 20 December, along with the legislative elections. Provided it all goes well, Madagascar can look forward to starting 2014 with a democratically elected government and picking up where it left off nearly five years ago.

Political wrangling

It has taken more than four years for the transitional government to organise elections. The election date had to be wrenched out of the authorities by the international community. At the heart of the problem is the deep, personal feud between Andry Rajoelina, the president, and his predecessor, Marc Ravalomanana, who fled to South Africa after the coup that deposed him. Both Rajoelina and Ravalomanana wanted to run in the forthcoming elections, but Rajoelina blocked every attempt by the former president to return to Madagascar.

In the end, neither candidate will be allowed to run because of pressure from the international community. For some Malagasies, it is good riddance, but others feel they have been robbed of the opportunity to settle the dispute at the polls once and for all.

Either way, Madagascar hasn't seen the back of them just yet. Ravalomanana, who still enjoys great popular support, is backing one of his former ministers, Jean-Louis Robinson. Unsurprisingly, Robinson has promised that if he were elected, his priority would be the return of the former president to the country.

As for Rajoelina, his party has two official candidates, Edgard Razafindravahy and Hery Rajaonarimampianina, but he himself is focusing on the legislative elections, hoping to win a majority and become prime minister.

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