Richard Ravalomanana as major general, the military leaders plaintively crying… wolf?

Richard Rravalomanana achieved a bounce from the position of colonel to that of major general within a mere couple of years. Quite a sumptuous though logical reward of his deeds, namely the restoration of order and security and the repeated crackdowns on opposition rallies directed against the transitional ruling power, is it not? He might not have played any significant role in the year 2009’s putsch hatch by mobs and then supported by rebelling forces, but, let us be fair, he has more than largely been contributing to maintain Andry Rajoelina in command by the illegal, but later on legalized use of force.

His outstanding rise began when he became General before all of his colleagues from the 13th promotion of the Military Academy. Hurricane Richard claimed next Razafindrakoro Bruno’s position, one of the officers who rallied to Andry Rajoelina back in 2009, and former Commander of National State Police department. Although the armed forces do remain divided about state matters, for each political group is being represented inside, the National State Police may be considered as devoted to the ruling HAT.

Anyway, after the couple of years in charge required from senior officers to move forward, Richard Ravalomanana collected some more stars and became Major General. Only the former Environment Minister, General Herilanto Raveloharison, may claim a short advance of some months. Having generals being in charge of an army corps, a mission usually entrusted to colonels, is the transitional ruling power’s original touch.
For the sake of securing allies and safety, Andry Rajoelina has not replaced a single army corps commander during the transition, unless any of them died, of course. 18 of these formers colonels have therefore become brigadier generals. They all matched the required terms to this promotion, namely being aged less than 56 years old, and having served at least six years in senior positions in the army.

Do not criticize, do rather pledge unconditionally support

In their joint report to the Cabinet, military senior officials suggest some correcting measures and interventions in the ground and required blind support and confidence from the people and the government. More accurately said, they expect more positive moral support and neither questions nor complains.

The national three uniformed services, that is to say the army, the national state police and the police departments conceded that they used to be put under significant strain, which actually did not deviate much from what they are supposed to withstand when completing their duty of maintaining and restoring public order, and securing the population’s safety … “Tenths of personal got killed in action while carrying their mission out, and protecting people and private property during rescue operations and crackdowns on zebu thieves.”

The three uniformed services complained about the criticism “which amounted to describe this action (the operation Tandroka) basically supposed to relieve populations from the Dahalo danger, as genocide or as a blind mass killing. All kinds of barbarian exactions are being blamed on service personal”… a slander campaign “reinforced by national or international bodies pretending to care about human rights.”

“Nothing can be held as perfect … but this is no reason to systematically run all of the government’s serving forces on the ground down ” moaned the armed forces. “Controversy and constant disparagement are everything but easing the task of keeping discipline and moral high for our security ground forces, which happen to be our Republic’s last resort. They do deserve support from the whole nation at every level of the society” Ok! Got the message: Praises and no more criticism, either against the armed forces or against their self proclaimed supreme commander, is it not what they want? Next time, no more reaction allowed… is it Democracy at all?