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15-10-2025
ANTANANARIVO: Lawmakers in Madagascar’s national assembly are voting on whether to impeach President Andry Rajoelina.
This is despite the fact that he earlier announced that the national assembly has been dissolved.
It is unclear where Rajoelina is, on Monday evening he made a live broadcast to the nation on Facebook from a “safe place”.
This comes after weeks of protests led by a group of young people known as Gen Z Mada.
A senior army general says the security forces are working together to maintain order.
On Sunday Rajoelina said that an attempt to seize power was under way.
Earlier, Madagascar’s embattled President Andry Rajoelina has issued a decree dissolving the National Assembly as he bids to avert a slide from power.
Rajoelina, who has fled the country, issued the decree on social media on Tuesday, ahead of a planned impeachment vote. However, with parts of the military and the police offering support to mass protests calling for his resignation, his efforts to cling to power threaten to send the island nation’s political crisis spiraling into chaos.
The decree to dissolve the assembly “shall enter into force immediately upon its publication by radio and/or television broadcast,” the presidency said in a statement published on Facebook.
Rajoelina, whose current whereabouts are unknown, defended the move in a separate social media post as necessary to “restore order within our nation and strengthen democracy” but opposition leader Siteny Randrianasoloniaiko who had been planning a vote to impeach Rajoelina on Tuesday, said the decree was “not legally valid”, because the president of the National Assembly, Justin Tokely, was not consulted over the move.
President in hiding
Rajoelina, a former mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, said in a speech broadcast on social media on Monday night that he had left the country in fear for his life and was sheltering in a “safe space”.
A military source told the Reuters news agency that Rajoelina left the country on Sunday on board a French army aircraft, although President Emmanuel Macron refused to confirm that his government had played a role.
Rajoelina’s departure came after army units defected on Saturday, with the president condemning the move as “an attempt to seize power illegally and by force”.
Hours after his comments, the army’s elite CAPSAT unit, which played a key role in the 2009 coup that first brought Rajoelina to power, said it had taken control of the military.
It had earlier announced that it would “refuse orders to shoot” demonstrators.
Police back protesters
On Tuesday, a privately owned news website in Madagascar, 2424.mg, reported that the police had also joined the military and gendarmerie in backing the demonstrations.
Led by Gen Z groups, the antigovernment protests over water and power outages began on September 25. However, they soon expanded to encompass wider grievances over the cost of living, poverty and alleged government corruption, fueling widespread calls for Rajoelina’s resignation.
The president’s attempt to shut down the parliament made clear that he remains adamant that he will not meet the demand.
The 51-year-old said he was “on a mission to find solutions” to the political crisis and would not let the impoverished nation “destroy itself”. (Int’l News Desk)
