SEVENTEEN
President Ratsiraka
Didier Ratsiraka was appointed as president of Madagascar in 1975 after a tumultuous period of student strikes, interim presidents and the assassination of his predecessor. He ruled until 1993. Ratsiraka originally championed Malagasy socialism, nationalizing many businesses. The disintegrating economy, the decision to accept foreign loans, falling commodity prices and international oil shocks brought the bankrupt government under the sway of the World Bank and the IMF by 1981.1 The neoliberal policies of structural adjustment, which would today be called ‘austerity,’ brought in a thirty-year period of practically no economic growth. Civil service salaries were frozen; corruption at all levels became a way of life.
In 1991 an uprising in the capital forced Ratsiraka to give up power after his two army helicopters threw hand grenades onto a peaceful protest march toward his palace. The Forces Vives government took over under President Albert Zafy in 1993. However, economic decline and corruption continued. In 1996, Zafy was impeached by the National Assembly for incompetence, including his attempt to circumvent the power of the World Bank by seeking ‘parallel financing.’
Letter to Richard, July 1995, Antananarivo–Lichtenstein. Great dinner with the Metcalfs, where Ros Metcalf diagnosed instantly ‘you need a book’ and pressed the 1,497 pages of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy into my hands.2
Peter Metcalf told me the whole soap opera of parallel financing. The new Forces Vives government has decided to escape from the structural adjustment of the World Bank and the IMF. Opportunely, a prince of Lichtenstein turned up, with some exceedingly dubious cronies. Apparently Lichtenstein has a plethora of princes, and this one was perfectly genuine—except as regards finance. The prince and co. promised to send a shipload of rice because they understood well the plight of the hungry Malagasy. The government trumpeted that they had found a source of ‘parallel financing’ which would free them from the Bank and the IMF.
You can imagine the resulting debacle, when in fact a shipload of Pakistani rice arrived—but payment was demanded on the spot, not deferred debt like the Bank.
Peter remarked, ‘The Malagasy may well think of Lichtenstein as one of the world’s great rice producers.’
After the fall of President Zafy, what followed was a democratic election. In the first round there were twenty-two candidates, almost all from Tana, with tiny splinter parties as background. No one in the country at large had heard of them. The second round came down to two candidates whose names people knew. However, though the constitution provided for impeaching a president, no one had thought to rule that he shouldn’t run for re-election. The two candidates, then, were ex-President Zafy, just impeached, and ex-President Ratsiraka, ousted by popular uprising.
Ratsiraka won, to the moderate relief of the foreign community. As the American ambassador remarked, ‘A better president is one that when you bribe him, he stays bribed.’
Patricia Wright and I met President Ratsiraka in a hotel in Washington, where she lobbied him for the success of Ranomafana National Park, and me for a conference of the International Primatological Society.
March 13, 1997. Madison Hotel, Washington DC.
Tall and much thinner than I expected, and not so old. (I suddenly think: five years younger than me!) His picture as a 30-year-old used to look proudly down from every official wall in Madagascar. He was so handsome then, roundish face, very black eyebrows, the military bearing which so often turns plump later on, photographed as from the upward gaze of a suppliant begging protection. The photographs in banks and post offices and offices grew dusty and sun-bleached over the seventeen years of his presidency, the red and blue naval uniform dimmed, epaulets tarnished with the verdigris of disillusion.
It now seemed a different man, thin, brisk, above all alive, with eyes that flashed question and answer. His right hand punctuated the air in its dark suit-sleeve, gleaming gold wristwatch, and heavy, classic, Antandroy silver bracelet. With all the evil things that have been said of him, nobody ever said he was stupid.
He sat on a brocade sofa with Mme Vaohitra at his left, wife of Barthélémy Vaohitra of WWF. Mme Vaohitra is the new minister of the environment. Pat Wright and I perched on armchairs, wound up tensely like—sifaka? Or do I mean fleas?—about to take off straight up in the air.
I opened with describing the International Primatological Society’s 1998 Congress—saying it should become a major statement of Madagascar’s importance to the environment and in the world. Not just primatology, but conservation as a whole. The Malagasy organizing committee want to call it ‘La responsabilité de l’homme pour sa propre survie a travers la Conservation de la Biodiversité.’
He actually listened—and said that, though long, the title was good. That indeed primatology alone would be far too limiting. (I seem to meet lots of people who don’t even pick up on the word ‘primatology,’ even if briefed beforehand, but he did.) He was pleased, too, I also asked for his high patronage.
I raised the question of refurbishment of the University before the Congress. He said, ‘You find the money!’ (They estimate $250,000.) (I wouldn’t have said anything, except that Leon Rajaobelina told Pat we must, twice, and Mme Vaohita told me early yesterday to bring it up.) I demurred, and the president said, what about using the new indoor stadium. Mme Vaohita explained that scientific congresses need seminar rooms, not just a central hall. However, the president said, you need a minimum of decency. At least the toilets have to work! We changed the subject—but Mme V. whispered to me later that yesterday the Ministry of Finance had OK’d the refurbishment!
He started to talk about the richness of Madagascar, especially its pharmaceutique naturelle, and the woundhealing product Madecassol. Then he said that lemurs were reputed to confer prolonged youth! That more than one head of state had begged a present of a couple of lemurs from him—he wouldn’t say who—and indeed those who had a couple of lemurs had lived very long lives. (I thought
Deng! Deng! Oh Lord!…) ‘After all,’ said the president, ‘that is every man’s dream, is it not?’
I sort of fumbled for words. Mme Vaohitra said, perhaps it is something to do with the glands they use to mark their territory. I said something silly about I hope it keeps people mentally young to have a couple of beautiful lemurs, not some chemical effect.
A nightmare: if lemurs were ever thought to be ‘rejuvenating’ it would take about two years for the Chinese to clear them off the face of the earth.
But President Ratsiraka’s first act on taking power again this month was to declare the Masoala National Park. The last great lowland rainforest, where I spent a week in a hut in the rain in 1975, the year Ratsiraka first became president, and a few days in 1985 with Martial Ridy, tavy cutter. It is now the pride of the CARE NBO and of the New York Zoological Society (aka Wildlife Conservation Society). The previous Zafy government was dickering with a piratical Malaysian logging company to abandon the Masoala to them, and enrich their personal bank accounts. Also perhaps to abandon the rest of the forest. WWF Malaysia blew the whistle. Ratsiraka’s immediate action was to throw out the Malaysian firm’s proposals.
OK. He knows where the higher stakes are—his almost next act has been to come to Washington and sign the structural adjustment credit with the World Bank. But he is acting like a real president, not a pirate.
Pat congratulated him on gazetting the Masoala Park, and mentioned Ranomafana. He said, ‘The place with the hot springs?’
‘Yes’
‘What has it?’
‘I’m sorry—I don’t know quite what you mean.’
‘What has it?’
‘Well I…’
‘What lemurs has it?’
‘Oh! A dozen kinds! Including the golden bamboo lemur, which was discovered only in 1986.’
‘Pat, don’t say it was discovered—Mr. President, Dr. Patricia Wright discovered it.’
‘Well, yes, I did. The golden bamboo lemur only exists in Ranomafana, and perhaps Andringitra.’
‘Do you have a picture of it?’
Pat opened Noel Rowe’s lovely compendium of living primates, and found his picture of Hapalemur aureus chewing its cyanide-laced bamboo.
‘How do you say it?’
‘Hapalemur aureus.’
‘Like ear [oreille]?’
‘No, like gold.’
‘Ah: alpha, upsilon, romeo, epsilon, upsilon, sigma.’
(He was, of course, a frigate captain, the highest ranking Malagasy naval officer, in 1975—all the other officers were French.)
‘How many are there?’
‘We don’t know—only that it is rare.’
‘What are you doing to prevent inbreeding, then, if there are so few?’
‘It is a worry. Fortunately Ranomafana is a very large park.’
‘I see—Really, you can only visit it by helicopter,’ said the president.
I found myself grinning broadly—a wholly nervous primate fear-grin. To me, I think only of the presidential helicopters throwing hand-grenades on the crowd marching toward his palace in 1991, and the reputed fifty deaths, including women and children. After the killing people murmured that such a murderer could never go on being president. Of course that just shows how gentle a country Madagascar is. A mere fifty deaths would go unnoticed in most of Africa.
He didn’t pause—of course, he traveled largely by helicopter as president. He went on, ‘If you are taking delegates to your congress to Ranomafana, there is no airfield, so you have only the choice of road or helicopter.’
‘We will have a big ceremony there this May, as well, for the handing over of all administration to ANGAP.’
But he did not know what ANGAP was. Mme. V. had to brief him about the National Parks and Reserves administration, set up so earnestly under the first environment plan to get those areas out of the clutches of the forestry department. The other meeting Pat and I were attending in Washington was all about the transfer of real power to ANGAP, under the second five-year tranche of the Environment Plan—power taken away from the foreign NGOS who’ve administered them so far. But the foreigners had $80 million over five years, while ANGAP only gets $40 million for the next five years, with a broader mandate. We will see if they can make it work.
The president then began to talk of his goal—a ‘République humaniste–ecologique.’ And ‘Perhaps it is a dream, but as I said in my inaugural address, the fauna and flora of Madagascar should be declared a world heritage, just like Antarctica. We already have one World Heritage Park, in the west—Bemaraha—but all the fauna and flora should become a world heritage! Then at last we could finally stop the fires!’
Maybe, just maybe we will see the reprise of Radama I’s ten years of progress in the early nineteenth century? Maybe we will recover from your statistics, Richard, that Madagascar has declined more in income since 1960 than any other country in the world, that its school enrollments have halved, worse than any other country, that by percentage of people receiving less than $1/day—72 percent—Madagascar is the poorest country of all?
Times have changed, the president has not changed but come back again; but the president as a person seems to have changed—maybe. It will be a wild ride until the country shuts again.
1. For an inside account by Léon Rajaobelina, then governor of the Bank of Madagascar, see A. Jolly, Lords and Lemurs: Mad Scientists, Kings with Spears, and the Survival of Diversity in Madagascar (2004).
2. Peter Metcalf, resident representative of the United Nations Development Program, and Rosemary Metcalf, lecturer in English Literature at the University of Antananarivo.