Constitutional advisory committee: a mass manipulation weapon?

The internationally non recognized and nationally challenged HAT is putting its money on  the constitutional referendum to turn the page and to impose its will once again. The political attempt to turn out some constitutional draft in a record time in the midst of a crisis and political instability period is far from convincing. The clock is ticking for the constitutional Advisory Committee and its gathered proposals because Andry Rajoelina is stubbornly keen on organizing the referendum on August 12th, 2010. One mere short week to think the country’s constitution up is everything but a comfortable skull session.  A member of the HAT tried to skirt around the issue by replying that political parties all have each a project up their sleeves and a law expert in their staffs. Proposals have, on this account, long been ready.  

Lots of law experts having been closely linked to the Constitution’s history in Madagascar do not think the same way. The HAT carefully ruled the constitution makers out, got rid of this potential threat in quality of very accurate obversers of the political evolution in the country as if Madagascar had just had gotten its independence like a wild horse. Icons like Jean Eric Rakotoarisoa has been excluded by the dictating authorities. His expertise  about the Madagascar’s constitution has apparently been ruined by his role as consultant for the international Contact Group and especially by his involvement in the SEFAFI, the nation’s very critical observer. The one considered as the constitutional right’s vice champion, after Honore Rakotomanana, did definitely not appreciate the CAC’s way of doing things, and made it public.  

Jean Eric Rakotoarisoa came to Tsimbazaza without a proposal in hand, but rather to give a piece of his mind to the committee members mandated by the HAT. He let them know that collecting proposals while no political agreement had yet been reached, was the wrong way. The hotchpotch of proposals would do nothing but confusing citizens even more since law capacities are paramount to the right choice. Jean Eric Rakotoarisoa stated that a political compromise is the priority number one in order to reach a clear draft and a simple question to voters. He subsequently denounced the potential manipulation of mobs. The development of a scholar’s text supposedly drawn from the presented and only from the presented proposals can actually offer a political advantage to the present authoritarian power.  

The civil society’s representatives equally want a debate before the constitutional project’s draft. They are requiring the definition of the essential values meant to be particularly hard to alter thereafter. The expected Constitution would be perennial as that presented by the American model: no many articles and legions of amendments in addition to them. Several key points as the allowed number of mandate, the presidential candidate’s  required age, the legal voter’s required age and the State’s regime will have to be clearly defined.  

The HAT led creation of the CAC is ruining what is left of its alleged neutrality. Its mission is the drafting of the “people”‘s expectations in legal terms. The HAT has been claiming legitimacy through this very much virtual notion with mitigated results. The CAC can be a weapon to manipulate voters potentially convinced that the Constitution is to serve neither Andry Rajoelina, nor the TGV’s HAT in general.