A stillborn “legalistic” radio station

The High Authority of Transition is not keen on having to face up to critiques on the waves, so long as they can avoid it, let alone to cope with any effective legalistic mean to sensitize partisans of the exiled president Marc Ravalomanana. In this sense, the authorities have just recently ruined a “legalistically aligned” radio station’s birth project.  

The erection of a radio station close to the political movement backing Marc Ravalomanana has, on several occasions, been announced. It would have been received on 89.6 FM, had the HAT not decided otherwise.  

The new station would have been named “Radion’ny Gasy”, the Malagasy for “the Madagascans’ Radio”. The name is amazingly familiar with the newspaper “Gazetin’ny Gasy.”  

A radio station would have been a significant boost for the “legalistic” demonstrations backing the exiled president’s cause. Marc Ravalomanana’s partisans have had nearly no more media to operate mobilization and sensitization after the closing of Radio Mada and the confinement of one of its main animators. Radio Mada has yet been Marc Ravalomanana’s first purchase before he got involved in politics in 1999. 

Radio Mada kept on broadcasting for a while after the putsch back in mid March, and then HAT militaries wrecked havoc in it and definitely sealed it. The station’s “secret studio” has been searched after the arrest of one of its journalists. There has only been total black out ever since. 100.8 Fm had gone quiet. 

Few months earlier, Marc Ravalomanana’s press group, the MBS, has already been ruined by Andry Rajoelina’s partisans. 

In order to fill up the gap “Radion’ny Gasy” was meant to save the situation. It wouldn’t just yet. The project’s fathers finally had to send their baby back to its murky womb. The creation of the new radio station has been entirely blocked.