An army unit siding with anti-government protesters on Sunday installed a new military chief as Madagascan President Andry Rajoelina denounced an “attempt to seize power illegally.”
The soldiers from the CAPSAT contingent joined protesters for a second consecutive day, attending a rally in the capital to remember the people killed in more than two weeks of anti-government demonstrations that erupted on Sept. 25.
The unit, which played a major role in a 2009 coup that first brought Rajoelina to power, on Saturday declared it would “refuse orders to shoot” on demonstrators.
Photo: AP
Soldiers then entered the city center to meet several thousand protesters, who welcomed them with jubilation and praise.
Early on Sunday the contingent claimed in a video statement that “from now on, all orders of the Malagasy army — whether land, air or the navy — will originate from CAPSAT headquarters.”
Hours later, its pick for new chief of the army staff, General Demosthene Pikulas, was installed during a ceremony at the army headquarters attended by Madagascan Minister of Armed Forces Manantsoa Deramasinjaka Rakotoarivelo.
“I give him my blessing,” said the minister, who was appointed by Rajoelina last week.
Pikulas told journalists that events in Madagascar over the past few days had been “unpredictable.”
“So the army has a responsibility to restore calm and peace throughout Madagascar,” he said.
Asked about calls for Rajoelina to resign, he said he refused to “discuss politics within a military facility.”
Rajoelina earlier on Sunday said that “an attempt to seize power illegally and by force, contrary to the constitution and to democratic principles, is currently under way.”
“Dialogue is the only way forward and the only solution to the crisis currently facing the country,” he said in a statement.
CAPSAT Colonel Michael Randrianirina said his unit’s decision to join the protesters did not amount to a coup.
“We answered the people’s calls, but it wasn’t a coup d’etat,” he told reporters.
The protests were initially focused on chronic power and water cuts in the impoverished Indian Ocean nation, but developed into a broader anti-government movement that called for 51-year-old Rajoelina to resign.
The UN has said that at least 22 people were killed in the first days, some by security forces, and others in violence sparked by criminal gangs and looters in the wake of the demonstrations.
Rajoelina has disputed the toll, saying last week there were “12 confirmed deaths, and all of these individuals were looters and vandals.”
Large crowds of people on Sunday joined prayers outside Antananarivo City Hall for the victims, who included a CAPSAT soldier killed in a clash with gendarmes on Saturday.
“We will prevail, because evil will not prevail in Madagascar,” Randrianirina told the gathering where officers were joined on stage by opposition political figures, including former Madagascan president Marc Ravalomanana, who was ousted in the 2009 uprising.
Officers of the gendarmerie, accused of heavy-handed tactics against the demonstrators, said in a video statement that they recognized “faults and excesses during our interventions.”
“We are here to protect, not to terrorize,” they said.
To try to defuse the protests, the president last month sacked his entire government.
Meeting one of the demands of the protesters, the Madagascan Senate on Sunday announced the dismissal of its president, Richard Ravalomanana, a former general of the gendarmerie paramilitary police.
Amid rumors that Rajoelina had fled, his government on Saturday said that he remained in Madagascar and was managing national affairs.
Madagascar has had a turbulent political history since it gained independence from France in 1960.
Although rich in natural resources for farming, forestry, fishing and minerals, nearly three-quarters of the population of 32 million lived below the poverty line in 2022, according to the World Bank.
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