Unsettling decisions

Air Madagascar will most probably be the focus of attention, this week, without, nonetheless, overshadowing the political issues. Madagascar Tribune revisits what it qualifies as a “commando operation, led by President Ravalomanana”, and aimed at saving and putting Air Madagascar back on the right track. Madagascar Tribune explains this operation in the following terms: “The management is in turmoil, the strategy has changed, there are new partners on the scene, etc… The course of action, which should conclude no later than the end of September, must be brief, swift, and striking.” Within this framework, the daily publication points out that “the facts are generating a rather peculiar conflict: Ravalomanana sympathizers within Air Madagascar oppose his plan, and want to go on strike.” It also believes that the current reorganization of Air Madagascar is rather hasty, perhaps even reckless.

In any event, the communication infrastructures, and the rural sector tend to monopolize the debates since President Ravalomanana started to elaborate on the basic premises, and the details of his development program. “Why not talk about the highways?” exclaims Midi Madagascar for whom “without highway restoration, there is absolutely no possibility of development.” Quoting from the President’s latest speech, this daily publication suggests that “only 33% of the highways of such a vast country are passable; it is quite obvious that the former administration brazenly neglected to pay enough attention to these means of communication; the majority of well paved blacktop highways which withstood the test of time, were built during the First Republic.”

On the political front, we recall Madagascar Tribune, qualifying “Albert Zafy, and his colleagues from the national reconciliation committee”, none too flatteringly, as “moderate tribalists”, and criticizing them for their ineptitude at the height of the political crisis. Express Madagascar, for its part, recounts the latest presidential visit to Toamasina. It talks about “witness testimony confirming the flip-side of the peace restoration coin” within this region which remained “former president Ratsiraka’s stronghold” for so long. “The good-natured jovial atmosphere poorly masked the population’s prevailing concern in the eastern port city.”

Translated by J. F. Razanamiadana