The current Madagascar’s unfolding political crisis has reached a dramatic turning point with reports revealing that President Andry Rajoelina has reportedly fled the country, taking refuge in France amid growing unrest and an apparent military-led coup.
His abrupt departure underscores a profound collapse of authority and legitimacy, both politically and symbolically, and highlights the deep fractures within Madagascar’s political system.
Rajoelina’s fall from power, though sudden in appearance, was the culmination of long-simmering discontent among the Gen Z seeking for generational change.
For months, the island nation had been rocked by widespread youth-led protests, driven by frustration over chronic blackouts, water shortages, economic stagnation, and a deepening perception that the president had grown detached from the people he governed.
The protest movement, often referred to as “Gen Z Madagascar,” spread rapidly across urban and rural centers alike, signaling a generational rejection of the status quo.
Yet rather than responding with engagement or reform, Rajoelina’s government appeared increasingly defensive, even paranoid, framing the unrest as foreign-influenced or manipulated by political rivals.
What transformed the situation from mass protest into regime crisis, however, was the defection of key segments of the military - particularly the elite CAPSAT unit, which had previously helped install Rajoelina in power during his 2009 takeover.
When these soldiers declared they would no longer support the president or suppress peaceful protesters, it stripped Rajoelina of the one institution that had historically ensured his grip on power.
Faced with the collapse of security control, a shifting political class, and intensifying demands for his resignation, the president chose to leave the country — not merely as a precautionary measure, but as a final retreat from a crumbling regime.
His choice of destination was no accident. Rajoelina has long held dual French and Malagasy nationality — a fact that had previously sparked legal controversy about his eligibility to run for office.
Fleeing to France, therefore, was not just a matter of convenience or diplomatic ties; it was, symbolically, a return to a political and cultural center where he may have believed safety and support were more likely.
Yet in doing so, Rajoelina has deepened the crisis of legitimacy surrounding his presidency. To many Malagasies, his escape to the former colonial power evokes painful echoes of neocolonialism — of elites more loyal to Paris than to their own people.
The optics of the situation are particularly damaging. A sitting African president boarding what some reports claim was a French aircraft, amid protest and military pressure at home, paints a portrait not of a leader seeking mediation, but of one abandoning ship.
Whether the French government directly facilitated his departure or simply received him afterward, the implications are serious. It raises uncomfortable questions about France’s ongoing influence in Malagasy politics, especially given recent controversies over disputed territories like the Îles Éparses and the return of colonial-era artifacts.
Rajoelina’s flight has left a political vacuum in Antananarivo.
With no clear constitutional mechanism activated to replace him — and with the military now appearing to exercise de facto control — the country teeters between transitional opportunity and institutional collapse.
Civil society and protest leaders have demanded a new political order, one rooted in democratic reform and national sovereignty, while some military figures may view the moment as a chance to assert longer-term control.
The danger, as seen in other African contexts, is that what begins as a power vacuum in the name of reform can devolve into protracted military dominance or fragmented governance.
In exile, Rajoelina may seek to reassert himself through international channels, painting his departure as a forced exile and appealing for foreign recognition.
But without a solid base of domestic support, and having lost the loyalty of both the streets and the barracks, his chances of political resurrection appear slim. If anything, his flight has served to reinforce the very criticisms that drove the protest movement: that he was out of touch, unaccountable, and ultimately more invested in maintaining personal power than building national unity.
In the end, Rajoelina’s decision to flee to France was not just an escape from imminent danger. It was a revealing act of political self-preservation — one that confirmed, for many in Madagascar, just how far their president had drifted from the realities on the ground.
The question now is not whether the Rajoelina era has ended, but what will rise from its ashes — and whether Madagascar’s people can reclaim a democratic future from the wreckage of elite flight and institutional breakdown.