A mob of opposition supporters ransacked and set fire to Madagascar’s state radio station on Monday as political tensions boiled over on the Indian Ocean island.
Hundreds of rioters raided the Radio Nationale Malgache building in the capital, Antananarivo, after answering a weekend strike call by the city’s mayor, Andry Rajoelina, who has led a wave of anti-government demonstrations.
The mounting tensions have forced President Marc Ravalomanana, who came to power after disputed elections in 2001, to cut short a trip to South Africa.
The mob were among tens of thousands of demonstrators who had turned up earlier at a city square gathering, addressed by the mayor.
Some rioters looted furniture, computers and files from the building before setting it ablaze and damaging vehicles parked nearby.
Rajoelina has ratcheted up opposition to the government, which he brands a dictatorship, since last month when it shut down his television network, Viva, for broadcasting an interview with former president Didier Ratsiraka.
”Nowhere in the world has a military force ever succeeded in overcoming the force of the people,” Rajoelina, standing on the back of a truck, told the crowd gathered earlier on Monday in a main square in the capital.
”That is why we will continue even if they bring in foreign mercenaries to eliminate the mayor,” he said, referring to himself, before promising to free all political prisoners ”when I get to power”.
”Power belongs to the people. They can seize it [but] the government is proving to be a dictatorship every passing hour,” said Rajoelina, nicknamed TGV, or high speed train for his rapid-fire personality.
Rajoelina then joined the crowd and marched towards a court house where he said he was going to demand the release of a group of university students arrested on Saturday.
In other parts of town, protestors erected road barriers and blocked traffic, witnesses said.
Rajoelina defied government warnings to hold a major rally on Saturday in the capital at which he addressed more than 20 000 and called for a general strike.
Ravalomanana, who had been due to attend a regional summit beginning on Monday in Pretoria, flew back on Sunday night and accused the mayor of calling for a revolt.
”The call for revolt and civil disobedience … corresponds to a coup d’etat,” a statement from the president said, adding that it ”tramples on the values of the Constitution and the republic’s institutions”.
Several of Rajoelina’s supporters taunted the president as his motorcade left the airport and at least two vehicles had their windows broken.
Rajoelina (34) ran against Ravalomanana’s party as an independent candidate in municipal elections in 2007 and since taking office has grown into the regime’s most vocal opponent.
He has repeatedly condemned what he says are shrinking freedoms in Madagascar and also fiercely criticised a massive project to lease vast swathes of farmland to South Korean industrial giant Daewoo.
The Antannarivo mayoral seat has been a politically defining post in the country and it is where Ravalomanana rose to become president.
Madagascar has been dogged over the years by political turmoil. The run-up to the 2006 presidential elections won by Ravalomanana was fraught with unrest, including a series of grenade explosions rocking the capital.
The vast Indian ocean island’s 2001 presidential elections ended in violence and political crisis when then president Ratsiraka refused to accept defeat.
The impasse split the island in two — with two capitals, two governments, and a divided army — until Ravalomanana was officially proclaimed president in May 2002. — AFP
