The SADC leaves the responsibility of the crisis settlement to Rajoelina and Ravalomanana

It would come up to the 5th round of direct talks between the exiled President Marc Ravalomanana and the leader of the putsch which ousted him three years ago. The previous four ones failed to settle the crisis. The following implementation of the deal roadmap failed just as much to settle the same crisis. The deep political chasm between both sides actually happens to be nowhere near from being bridged at the eve of this fifth meeting.

The currently slanting consensus is the present cause for disputes. Reaching any potential common ground concerning so many various issues, the first of them being the organization of democratic, free and fair elections, reflects more of an utopia than anything else, in spite of the electoral commission’s technical commitment to complete the job before the end of 2012. The SADC rather strains to settle the main problem’s very hardcore in order to obtain a solid and viable political deal.

The outcome of this meeting between Marc Ravalomanana and Andry Rajoelina is expected to provide the SADC with a concrete and genuine political pledge for the proper and thorough implementation of the roadmap. So what with the inclusion of the Zafy political sphere? It actually did long ago push for such a round of talks, however between at least three and not only a couple of participants at the most.

The evolution of the situation does not bode well anyway for the TGV and the rest of the Rajoelina political herd. Rounds of direct talks have never been the suitable ground for their best performance. Even declarations are getting scarce following their leader’s conceded “willingness to meet Marc Ravalomanana for the sake of peace, reconciliation and the settlement of the crisis”. As usual, they are almost certainly planning to skirt around burning questions by rejecting the responsibility for the pending failure on the opposed side, which would arguably have produced excessive claims.

Marc Ravalomanana’s political sphere rejoices for having been favorably heard. The president of the transitional congress has equally long been pushing for such a meeting, for holding both figures as the single ones able to decide as for the settlement of the crisis. Stakes do remain the same ones as before, namely the political amnesty, Marc Ravalomanana’s safe come back home, and his right to freely run the presidential race.

The base appears far less optimistic as the top as a matter of fact. Rajoelina’s failure to keep his word, no matter who is mediating, is no more secret to anyone. Jean Louis Rakotoamboa does not expect much change to emerge from this Rajoelina-Ravalomanana round of talks, while recalling that the transitional leader has so far been proving to be no man of honor, deemed to stay true to his stand.  According to him, the single viable cure to this crisis denting the country on a daily basis is the removal of Andry Rajoelina from his transitional throne so that the Malagasy people freely founds a new Republic.

Trebile Drame, Amara Essy, Jean Ping, Leonardo Simao and Marius Fransman have successively been failing as mediators to pave the way for any shadow of reconciliation during the latest three years. Africa and the rest of the world now know that Madagascans do not need to resort to war to conduct their own cold war.

Direct talks are consequently recovering the front scene as the main trend, since mediation from the SADC, the AU, the UN, the OIF and the International Contact Group all failed from bringing many more progress. The mediation’s legitimacy related issue is, even in this case, not settled for so much.