Description of Electoral System:

The President is Head of State and is directly elected by an absolute majority in a secret, universal, adult ballot. The President is eligible for election for two five year terms. Prime Minister is head of government and is elected by the National Assembly and appointed by President. The Prime Minister must resign if motion of censure is passed by a majority of National Assembly.

Parliament consists of a National Assembly and a Senate. The National Assembly has 160 seats elected from single member and two member constituencies by a plurality. Members serve a five year term. The Senate consists of 90 members, 10 are elected from each of the six provinces by proportional representation, by an electoral college consisting of provincial councillors (elected by direct universal suffrage) and the mayors. The other 30 are appointed by the President to represent economic, social, cultural, and religious groups. Senate members serve a term of five years.

Politics of Madagascar

Events

Seminar: Women's participation and representation in the conduct of public affairs

The seminar launched a national Plan of action to increase women's participation and representation in the conduct of public affairs in Madagascar on 26 January 2009, in Hotel Carlton, Antananarivo.

Civil Society - Parliament Engagement

EISA will be holding a parliamentarian's workshop in Antananarivo, Madagascar as well as a dialogue between parliamentarians and civil society organisations on 6 November.

Worshop: Challenges of
Election management &  prospects for reforms in  Madagascar

EISA held a workshop on Challenges of election management and prospects for reforms in Antananarivo, Madagascar on 22 May 2008

Madagascar became independent in 1960, with Philibert Tsiranana as the president. The government’s economic policy led to economic stagnation and increasing poverty which resulted in a peasant revolt and other unrest in the early 1970s. Unable to govern, the President handed over power to the military who adopted authoritarian socialist economic policies. These however led to economic decline and massive state indebtedness; under IMF pressure limited economic reforms were undertaken but these failed to reverse the decline. Popular pressure in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to a process of democratic reform culminating in the formation of a transitional government in 1991 and democratic presidential elections in November 1992 and National Assembly elections in June 1993. Albert Zafy assumed the presidency and his Active Forces coalition dominated the legislature.

Vigorous economic reform led to sustained growth between 1991 and1996, reversing some of the losses of the past but failed to translate into improved living standards for the population at large. Zafy was successfully impeached for corruption and his party’s candidate lost to former president Didier Ratsiraka in the 1997 presidential election. High economic growth was achieved, but was accompanied by massive corruption and nepotism.

Faced with the unexpected prospect of defeat in the 2001 presidential elections at the hands of Marc Ravalomanana, Ratsiraka resorted to various dubious measures to undermine the opposition and then to blatant vote rigging when these failed. Conflict between the Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka factions over the election deteriorated to the point of civil war and the economy came to an absolute standstill. In the end the military forces accepted Ravalomanana’s victory and Ratsiraka went into exile. The economic gains made since 1991 had been undone by the six-month long standoff between the two factions and Madagascar was left worse off than ever before. Oil, however, has recently been found off-shore. After the 2002 political crisis, National Assembly elections were held in December.  Ravalomanana's newly formed TIM (Tiako-I-Madagasikara; I Love Madagascar) Party won a commanding majority in the National Assembly. Local elections followed in November 2003 and TIM won 66% of the vote placing them in a position to control the Senate.

Previous elections

DID YOU KNOW?

A constitutional referendum in 2007 endorsed the addition of English as official language

Preliminary, but unofficial figures, for the National Assembly election held on 23 Sep 2007 indicate that TIM will retain its control of the National Assembly.

In a referendum on 4 Apr 2007 the electorate overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendments that granted additional emergency powers to the president, abolished the six provinces and replaced them with 22 developmental areas and added English as an official language (For more details see 2007 Constitutional referendum results).

In the presidential election of 2006 Ravalomanana, won 54,8% of the votes, followed by independent Jean Lahiniriko by 11,68%. Iarovana Roland Ratsiraka, also an independent, took 10,9% and the remaining 23.4% was shared by 11 other candidates (For more details see 2006 Presidential results.

Next elections

The next Presidential election is due in 2011 and National Assembly elections are scheduled  for 2012.