Week 3 - Part 1

As I write this, despite 11 hours sleep last night, I am still tired from my trip to the countryside to see a Famadihana or “Turning of the Bones Ceremony”. But more of that in a moment…

Last Sunday night I went to dinner with friends of Haro’s who had an American visitor staying. She had just been travelling down to the south of Madagascar for a week, and her stories of seeing lemurs, the amazing scenery, etc and the amazing stars at night made me even more keen to get out of Tana and see a bit more of Madagascar. She works in public health, which meant some very interesting conversations about the health situation of Malagasies, including the very low incidence of HIV/AIDs compared to most African countries. Sometimes being a poor island nation can be a good thing.

We started the work week sorting out schedules, and I put in another bid to speak to young people (18-25) partly because I think Haro needs to engage them, and partly because I have to do that for my uni assignment! I think I have arranged to speak to six groups – public and private uni students, college / Baca Laureate graduates, and two groups of very poor young people. Over the coming weeks I’ll also be meeting with other groups – poor mothers, countryside people, older men…

Since his speech to the railway union last week, Haro has been having people suggest to him that he runs for President, rather than Mayor. He feels that he is not ready for that, but if there is a true vacuum then he may need to step up. The conversation came up with the team on Monday afternoon, and there were very mixed views on whether the group is ready to be aiming so high – with strong resistance from the association president especially. So we talked about running a parallel planning process, working on a local city strategy and a country strategy, until things become clearer. Everyone seems happy with this approach.

As part of our discussion about the Presidential race, we went through all the likely candidates for President and Mayor, and talked about which Presidential candidates Haro could see himself aligned with / supporting. It turned out there were only two – a female Greens candidate, who really has no chance of winning, and a guy who has been a judge in the International Court of Justice, who is a man of integrity, but highly intellectual, and therefore has very little popular support.

Interestingly, two days later, Haro got a call from that very guy’s people, asking to meet. The speculation is that he keen to be named transitional President, in the hope that this will enable him to build a base to be elected President. He probably wants to ask Haro to be Justice Minister in the transitional government, which Haro sees as a no win situation – no power or mandate to achieve anything, yet resulting in being branded because the transitional government will be seen as connected with the current hated de facto government, who are controlling the process. The question for Haro is, if this guy asks for Haro’s support, what would be the answer. He is strongly connected in the establishment (he is actually descended from royalty), and an alliance would mean immediate access for Haro to all the establishment families, with their money and power. The concern is how that alliance would work, and how Haro and his team would maintain their independence. A possible path is to encourage the guy to focus on the actual Presidential race, rather than the transitional arrangements, and agree a mutual support arrangement – him and his establishment connections, Haro and his working class base – him for President, Haro for Mayor. Apparently if that happened it would be the first time ever that the establishment and the people had worked together.

We started this week to work with the team on what other groups they need to start considering / consulting with, and ran an exercise where they brainstormed different groups of society where they have connections and how they might approach them, and other groups where they don’t have connections, or they are wary of / hate them.

It seems that the team was not quite ready for the idea of expanding to embrace other groups – especially those who they see as the corrupt oppressors of their class. Over lunch, some of them also brought up concerns that we were being naïve to think that values, a philosophy and a vision would be enough to combat those who use political tricks to maintain their power. One cited a taxi driver, who laughed at the idea of politicians and public servants who cared about the people, saying that no-one in power cares about looking after anyone except themselves. At this, Haro quite rightly pointed out that that that kind of cynicism is indicative of a huge crisis of values in the country.

We probably need to slow things down a bit, and be clear that the work we are doing at the moment is about creating a strong foundation for the party, to allow it to go forward with clear goals and a core strength. It will also be important to structure the association so that the executive founders feel comfortable the organisation will not be hijacked by a new cohort of members with different aims. According to Haro, this is the first time ever in Madagascar that a political party has developed a philosophy before it seeks power. I see mass consultations with all different societal groups as crucial to the successful development of the philosophy and vision, and also to creating a collective buzz about Manajary Vahoaka and Haro.

On Tuesday I went to lunch at Haro’s older brother Haga’s house. He’s married to Fabiola, who holds Belgian and Mauritian passports, but despite being married to a Malagasy, having two Malagasy children, and living here for a long time, cannot get Malagasy citizenship. So we had quite a discussion about how many people are excluded from citizenship here, and the political implications of supporting them. I’ve also finally worked out that lunches here will usually have three courses, so for once did not fill up on the entrée thinking it was the whole meal…

Haro and Julie also had another dinner party on Thursday – once again I smiled all evening and wished that I had continued on with French after year 10! The conversation was very focused on politics and the state of the country – it made me really ponder the contrast with some of the dinner conversations I’ve had in Australia, and wonder whether we would be more engaged if the stakes were higher. Though possibly I’m missing exactly that right now as Australia tips into its third week with no election result!

Continued in Week 3 - Part 2...