Madagascar police have released six detained opposition members, including a senator, but political tensions flared as their party’s exiled leader vowed to return despite arrest threats, officials said on Wednesday.
Government officials renewed pledges to detain Arema party chief Pierrot Rajaonarivelo if he sets foot on the Indian Ocean island, saying they had proof of financial crimes he committed while serving as deputy prime minister.
Undeterred, Rajaonarivelo, who is currently on the island of Mauritius, renewed his promise to return home in time for a Saturday rally and to register as a candidate to challenge President Marc Ravalomanana in December elections.
Yet, after several days of unrest in the eastern city of Toamasina, where authorities closed the airport to block Rajaonarivelo’s planned weekend arrival there, residents said calm was restored after the release of the detainees.
Since Saturday, police in Toamasina had at least twice fired tear gas at crowds of Arema supporters and on Tuesday arrested six, including opposition Senator Pierre Fajy, for participating in an illegal demonstration.
”The activists were all freed overnight after being interrogated,” a senior official told AFP from the city, about 370km east of the capital. ”Order has been
restored.”
In Antananarivo, the government said it had evidence Rajaonarivelo is guilty of more than just embezzlement charges he was convicted on in August and given 15 years at hard labour in absentia.
Finance Minister Radavidson Andriamparany told reporters that while deputy prime minister Rajaonarivelo in February 2002 had issued government credits for a half-billion dollar loan that never arrived in the country.
”We have the documents that show state guarantees were indeed made for a loan of $500-million,” he said. ”Apparently, this money never entered Madagascar.”
Andriamparany said it was too soon yet to bring new charges against Rajaonarivelo but that an investigation into the matter was well under way.
On the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, Rajaonarivelo said his life was in danger but maintained he would keep earlier promises to return to Madagascar and stand in the December 3 polls.
”For several days, and the events of yesterday in Toamasina confirm it, I have had the sense my life is in danger,” he said in a statement. ”The current regime is tyrannical and will stop at nothing.
”But I will go to Madagascar with security, it is easier to kill me on foreign soil than to arrest me in my native land,” he said.
”I have no fears about my return soon to Antananarivo.”
Rajaonarivelo served in the government of former Madagascan president Didier Ratsiraka, who fled into exile after widespread violence rocked the country during disputes over the last presidential election in 2001.
Those polls ended in political crisis when Ratsiraka refused to accept defeat. The impasse split the island in two, with two capitals (Antananarivo and Toamasina), two governments, and a divided army.
The unrest only ended when Ravalomanana was officially proclaimed president in May 2002. Ratsiraka and Rajaonarivelo fled to France. – Sapa-AFP