Several hundred unarmed army reservists in Madagascar on Friday barricaded Parliament and said they were taking lawmakers hostage to press for long-standing demands they be paid for backing President Marc Ravalomanana during the country’s political crisis in 2002.
”We are taking the deputies hostage so that they debate our demands today. From our point of view, negotiations are over,” said the reservists’ spokesperson, Georges Randimbiarijaona.
A parliamentary official said all 160 deputies were in the building to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of an association of parliamentarians and their staff.
According to Randimbiarijaona, between 1 000 and 1 500 reservists had gathered at the National Assembly building in the central highland capital, Antananarivo.
The reservists are demanding demobilisation bonuses in excess of the 200 000 ariary (about R940) per person promised them by the government during a ceremonial laying down of arms in January this year.
They were among about 2 500 civilians who responded to Ravalomanana’s appeal to ”take back the country” following a presidential election in December 2001, which Ravalomanana — then the mayor of the capital — claimed to have won outright but long-time leader Didier Ratsiraka said had to go to a run-off.
The row between the two men plunged the country into a political crisis that divided the country into two camps and sporadically boiled over into fighting.
After a seven-month stand-off that left the agriculture-based economy crippled, the crisis was resolved when Ratsiraka went into exile in France.
The reservists first voiced their complaints at the disarmament ceremony in January this year. Their protest constitutes the most serious chink in Ravalomanana’s overwhelming popularity since he came to power.
In February, the Defence Ministry offered to pay arrears to each reservist, to reimburse medical expenses incurred by those injured and to provide pensions to spouses of the 38 reservists killed during the crisis.
But the following month, the reservists took to the streets of the capital again to press for better bonuses.
”We considered ourselves to be proper soldiers. We should have the same rights,” explained Randimbiarijaona then. — Sapa-AFP