Madagascar president dissolves parliament as protests intensify
Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina has announced the dissolution of the National Assembly in an effort to maintain control amid escalating political unrest.
Rajoelina, who has fled the country, issued the decree on social media on Tuesday, ahead of a planned impeachment vote, News.Az reports, citing Al Jazeera.
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 spiralling 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.
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 country’s military.
It had earlier announced that it would “refuse orders to shoot” demonstrators.
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