Speech by President Marc Ravalomanana to the SADC Extraordinary Summit on Madagascar

Excellencies, Heads of State and of Government, I thank you for this opportunity to address you.

Let us start at the beginning: there was a coup in my country, an illegal coup, not a popular uprising. The whole world deemed it illegal and suspended aid.

There should be no dispute about this, it is all documented. But I wanted to stress this fact, because of the many popular uprisings in the North of Africa.

Those uprisings represent the will of the people; the coup in Madagascar was the opposite: it subverted the will of the people, and placed an illegal regime in power. We all agree on that.

Why did it happen? It was because I, as the elected President, was taking Madagascar to new heights politically and economically.

I joined SADC. I oversaw unprecedented economic growth of 7.1 per cent during my term. I foresaw that new growth would come from all countries, specifically southern African countries, and not just from Europe.
I opened the economy, the right thing for the people of the island. It was important for us to join the global economy. I suggested English should be a third official language.

What did the illegal regime do after violently seizing power? They took the economy out of the people’s hands and even out of French hands into private ownership. They destroyed infrastructure we had created. They systematically crippled the growth rate until it was – as it is now – negative. They detained opponents at will, tortured them, and closed all opposition media voices. There is no rule of law. People are starving.

It is extraordinarily painful to see my country and her people suffer so much.

In an attempt to end the political crisis that is keeping our country in turmoil, the Roadmap was created. The proposed Roadmap is critically flawed. The Troika communiqué, from the Livingstone Summit, mentioned in paragraph 11 that the Malgacho-Malgache talks should be guided by the principles of ‘consensus, inclusivity and transparency.’ I fully agree that these should become the guiding principles of finding a solution, but, at present, such consensus and inclusivity are absent from the Roadmap.

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