Rajoelina – Ravalomanana: SADC requires the talks to take place before July 31st

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The Southern African Development Community has its credibility at stake in the management of the Malagasy crisis. She has just order Andry Rajoelina to do what it takes to come to an agreement with Marc Ravalomanana. The ousted president happens to be equally under pressure even though having been heard by the mediation. Talks with the TGV are actually involving concessions.

This time around, SADC itself appears bound to mediate in these talks, and warns. Could this round fail again, and both sides ever remain reluctant to reach a final agreement deemed to ensure the implementation of the Roadmap, the responsible side will be disowned and rejected by the international community, regarding future participation in the process.

Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana will have to take responsibilities in this big game. SADC recalled that both parties already agreed to this meeting, and that nothing actually came true. According to the Southern African community, finding “any credible and fair solution to this crisis deeply affecting the Malagasy people, remains the greatest challenge.”

The HAT played a deaf ear… again… to the call from the SADC’s highest spheres. The need of talks with Marc Ravalomanana, the legal president illegally ousted in 2009 by a putsch supported by a rebelling part of the armed forces, does remain a priority, no matter what they have to say about it.

The Ravalomanana longs for the earliest possible start of these talks for ages. Nothing concerning the main goals has changed an inch, namely the exiled president’s safe return home, the establishment of a truly consensual transition with genuine power sharing patterns in accordance with the roadmap.

Rajoelina tried to win some time, as per usual, namely by lurking behind the Independence Day’s celebrations on June 26th. Then, for the sake of taking no risks to mess everything up by himself, he wanted his advisors to be allowed to engage multiple talks in the background.

SADC seems however more concerned by  the Malagasy people’s critical situation than by the transitional leader’s own concerns. His feared adversary is irretrievably gaining ground. These talks will decide about the both leaders’ withdrawal from the presidential elections or eventually about the expected electoral confrontation Rajoelina vs. Ravalomanana.

The international community fully supports the SADC and expects more decisive changes to emerge from this meeting between Ravalomanana and Rajoelina than from the events of the latest years. The meeting is likely to be held on September 21st, 2012 in Seychelles. The election of South African national Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at the African Union’s presidency is likely to make life easier for the mediation. The SADC has so far always been avoiding to poke its nose too deeply into the Madagascan crisis, and restricting its action to mediation. The strategy has three years long been proving unfruitful. Time has now come to get a move on, hasn’t it?