The need to reshuffle the CENI is widely accepted

The reshuffle of the CENI passes is to be passed as a law by the parliament of the transition. The institution´s composition will have to match the current political balance. Its very foundations will be based on the transitional roadmap and in no way to any fictional constitution of a 4th republic. Political entities bound by the roadmap are appearing to agree on the reshuffle process.  

The president of the CENI convinced to have done nothing wrong, definitely does not want to leave by the backdoor and even argued that any reshuffle would potentially jeopardize the next elections. Considering the referendum related irregularities noticed in November 2010, any worse electoral achievement would be a miracle.  

Hery Rakotomanana would recover his position, could he be presented as candidate by his original political group, then elected by his peers. Such a scheme would however not serve a commission expecting to recover a neutral and independent face.  

The possibility get another mandate within the electoral commission is being granted to each of its present members as far as the law does not forbid it. The reshuffle might in the end turn into an extension, could the electoral observation groups, the civil society, the ministries of the Interior and Decentralization, or eventually the law school… keep away from putting names forth.  

The new representative of reporters is now standing to take charge. What a blow for the CENI member named as such for merely having been the former president of the journalists´ order, part of the former CNE and one of the HAT´s former prime minister´s closest advisor.  

Merely the political sphere supportive of the ruling power used to be representing and represented by the electoral commission, as the opposition chose to keep out. The next CENI will have to include each of the 11 entities bound by the roadmap, while the three ones which voluntarily refused to sign are automatically ruled out of it, although they are likely to run the next electoral competition.  

The previous electoral commission unilaterally empowered by the HAT was not legitimate and failed scores of credibility tests. It was merely erected for the sake of serving the ruling power´s leader´s will to enforce his personal constitution through a poor referendum. 

The national independent electoral commission deemed to be erected in accordance with the roadmap will be playing a major role in the settlement of the political crisis in Madagascar. Another crisis after the elections is the likely response to the HAT´s potential will to have it its own way.