Happy fortieth birthday to you, you good old MFM party!

No matter, the party founded and still led by Manandafy Rakotonirina valiantly keeps on supporting former President Marc Ravalomanana, kept out in exile in South Africa during the latest three years. Manandafy himself was largely involved into the negotiation process in the Madagascan crisis, under the Ravalomanana political sphere’s banner. But still the MFM party remains keen on confirming its autonomy. The relationship between the MFM and the former president has been remaining cordial. His liberal agenda brought the MFM party to pledge support to the businessman Marc Ravalomanana during the year 2001’s presidential election. The same businessman has however captured Manandafy’s focus earlier, when he himself served as Supreme Counselor of the Revolution (CSR) in charge of the industrial sector during the Second Republic in the late 80s. The MFM was basically born as a proletarian party. By the mid-80s, the international context progressively drew the party to push for economic and political liberalism. Manandafy became by so doing the challenger number one for the former Malagasy dictator, Didier Ratsiraka, during the 1989’s presidential election. The MFM recovered the front lines of the 1991’s popular movement, which led to Didier Ratsiraka’s regime’s fall down two years later, triggered by elections widely held as free, fair and democratic.