Madagascar: Rolling Up Their Sleeves

MADAGASCAR

Rolling Up the Shirt Sleeves

The East African island of Madagascar has the dubious distinction of suffering the worst deforestation on the planet.

So it’s heartening that some Malagasy teenagers are working with environmentalists to practice sustainable farming that feeds people while preserving forests in the Indian Ocean nation.

The forest “provides the fresh air we breathe and helps the livelihoods of the local people,” Omega, a 16-year-old farmer, toldthe BBC. “If it continued to be destroyed, there would be less water to drink. There would be a loss of habitat for wildlife in the forest, such as the lemurs – they would disappear. They would all die.”

The country is also among the most impoverished in the world.

That fact recently spurred a group of mothers to launch their own public health initiatives with the help of local and international aid groups. The mothers hold song circles in the southern town of Tanandava, for example, to inculcate lessons on hygiene, water treatment and the virtues of spacing out pregnancies, wroteUNICEF USA in Forbes.

Unfortunately, that hard work is necessary in part because many Malagasy leaders have washed their hands of addressing their country’s daunting challenges.

Fortunately, things might be changing.

Madagascar’s anti-corruption agency recently recommended that prosecutors charge more than half of the country’s lawmakers – 79 out of 151 – with accepting bribes and other corruption-related crimes, reported Agence-France Presse.

That action stems from investigations into allegations that parliamentarians accepted $14,000 apiece last year to vote in favor of electoral law changes that would benefit ex-President Hery Rajaonarimampianina in the November 2018 presidential elections.

Thousands took to the streets to protest the changes. After two months of demonstrations, the country’s top court ruled the changes unconstitutional. Andry Rajoelina won the presidential election and promptly pledged to root out graft in government.

As Africanews explained, he found more rot than initially expected. Investigators also recently alleged that Madagascar’s former ambassador to the United Nations and two former staffers at its embassy in Washington, DC, had embezzled about $300,000 in public funds.

The anti-corruption office’s stunning moves came shortly before parliamentary elections that are slated for May 27. Few of the accused lawmakers are running for re-election. If found guilty, they could face up to five years in jail.

Rajoelina has more work to do. Last month, for example, Amnesty International claimed that long, torturous pretrial detentions are common in Madagascar, crowding prisons designed to hold around 10,600 people with more than 14,000 detainees who have not been convicted of any crimes.

He’s trying, though. He’s trying.