MADAGASCAR’S JUNTA CONSOLIDATES AUTHORITARIAN GRIP EIGHT MONTHS AFTER COUP
Eight months after seizing power in October 2025, Madagascar’s military-led transition has shed any pretense of democratic restoration. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has issued its sharpest rebuke yet, demanding the release of political prisoners, an end to arbitrary arrests of opposition leaders and Generation Z activists, and the return of political exiles. The regional bloc’s language signals not diplomatic concern but the recognition of systemic failure.
For ordinary Malagasy citizens, the consequences are immediate. The Constitutional High Court, the nation’s highest judicial authority and guardian of electoral integrity, fell under military domination in June. Two judges facing charges of “destabilizing the regime” resigned on June 18 and were replaced within twenty-four hours. Three other court members had already been removed by decree in December 2025. The court’s independence, essential for validating election results, has effectively vanished. Any future elections would operate under a judiciary stripped of the autonomy required to ensure their credibility, leaving citizens without a reliable mechanism to hold power to account.
Russia’s deepening institutional presence compounds these democratic deficits. In November 2025, National Assembly President Siteny Randrianasoloniaiko traveled to Moscow to establish multidimensional cooperation spanning energy and media relations. More troubling still, Madagascar’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) underwent training in Russia, a nation whose electoral standards offer little reassurance to democratic observers. The alignment is no longer merely diplomatic. It has become structural, embedding a foreign power’s influence into the machinery of governance that citizens depend on for fair representation.
The security dimension of this partnership carries particular weight for the public. The Africa Corps, Russia’s military successor to the Wagner Group on the continent, completed training of more than one hundred Madagascan soldiers on May 5 in Antananarivo, including special forces and the presidential guard. Moscow now trains the men protecting the junta’s leader, Colonel Andry Randrianirina. This Russian-backed arrangement fundamentally alters internal power dynamics, making peaceful alternation of power far less viable and foreclosing the constitutional pathways citizens would ordinarily rely on to change their government.
Political opposition has been methodically silenced over the past three months, a striking development given that some opposition figures initially tolerated or supported the October coup. Deputy Antoine Rajerison had his parliamentary immunity stripped in early June. Colonel Patrick Rakotomamonjy, a prominent figure in the October uprising, was arrested in April on charges of “plotting against the state” after publicly denouncing corruption within the regime. Paul Rabary, leader of the Ny Fireneko party and former education minister, was imprisoned in May for “threatening state security” based on disputed interpretations of his communications. Each case follows an identical pattern: vague accusations, swift detention, murky legal justification.
Civil society faces mounting hostility. Several Generation Z Madagascar leaders were arrested at night after publicly distancing themselves from the junta. Amnesty International condemned the regime in March for deploying “deliberately vague accusations of criminal conspiracy or threats to national security” to suppress activism. The government has announced plans for social media regulation that would constrain the digital platforms where youth activism has flourished, narrowing the civic space available to ordinary citizens seeking to organize or speak out.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, representing nearly a quarter of Madagascar’s population, issued an unambiguous statement in May, condemning “the arrest of those who do not share the government’s opinions” and demanding a clear electoral roadmap. That voice, rooted in the daily lives of millions of Malagasy, carries weight the regime cannot long ignore.
The transition no longer promises democratic restoration. Counter-powers have been neutralized, opposition criminalized, and security institutions locked down with Russian support. What remains is a consolidating political order that leaves citizens with fewer protections, less access to independent justice, and diminishing avenues for civic participation. The question facing the international community is no longer whether Madagascar’s transition will succeed, but at what point a suspended transition becomes an entrenched regime that the world tacitly accepts as the new normal for the Malagasy people.