Madagascar\u2019s president, Andry Rajoelina, is reported to have fled the country on a French military aircraft, hours before he was scheduled to address the people.<\/p>\n
French state radio RFI reported on Monday that the president, who also has French citizenship, had been flown out of the capital, Antananarivo, after a deal with President Emmanuel Macron. It added that he may have headed for Dubai.<\/p>\n
He had been due to speak to the nation at 7pm (1600 GMT), according to a statement from the presidency on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Rajoelina, 51, was first president from 2009 to 2014 before returning to power in 2023<\/a>. He was increasingly isolated after losing the support of a key army unit that joined thousands of youths activists known as \u201cGen Z Madagascar\u201d<\/a> to protest against corruption and poverty. The movement had earlier turned down an invitation to meet him for dialogue and demanded his resignation.<\/p>\n People flooded a square in front of the Antananarivo city hall on Monday, waving flags and chanting slogans, some hanging off military vehicles as they arrived, according to Agence France-Presse reporters.<\/p>\n Among the demonstrators were soldiers from the elite Capsat unit, which played a major role in the 2009 coup during Rajoelina\u2019s rise to the presidency after mass protests forced his predecessor Marc Ravalomanana out of power.<\/p>\n Also present were gendarmerie officers, accused of using heavy-handed tactics during the near-daily protests over more than two weeks. They admitted in a video statement to \u201cfaults and excesses\u201d in their response.<\/p>\n At least 22 people were killed in the first days by security forces and others in violence sparked by criminal gangs and looters, according to the UN. But Rajoelina had disputed the toll, saying last week there were \u201c12 confirmed deaths and all of these individuals were looters and vandals\u201d.<\/p>\n On Saturday, some Capsat soldiers had posted a video to social media saying: \u201cLet us join forces, military, gendarmes and police, and refuse to be paid to shoot our friends, our brothers and our sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cClose the gates, and await our instructions,\u201d they added. \u201cDo not obey orders from your superiors. Point your weapons at those who order you to fire on your comrades in arms because they will not take care of our families if we die.\u201d<\/p>\n The showdown began following the arrest of two politicians on 19 September after planning a protest against the country\u2019s chronic power and water outages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madagascar\u2019s president, Andry Rajoelina, is reported to have fled the country on a French military aircraft, hours before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-210458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}