Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-07-Speech-4-269"
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"en.20090507.34.4-269"2
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"− Madam President, I speak on behalf of the Socialist Group and as the Party of European Socialists’ shadow rapporteur on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the group of southern African countries that included Madagascar. In April we overwhelmingly approved that Economic Partnership Agreement with reservations about the situation in Zimbabwe. If we were debating that EPA today, we would have to enter our reservations regarding Madagascar.
Yet only 15 years ago there seems to have been the potential for Madagascar to be so different. I can remember in 1993 the visit of the then newly elected President Albert Zafy. But, of course, by 1996 he had been impeached for corruption and the abuse of power. Since then, Madagascar has been troubled by unstable governments with threats of secession and impeachment punctuating a rough politics.
Now we have a situation – an army coup d’état – partly triggered by a plan by the former government to lease one million acres of land in the south of the country to a Korean firm for intensive farming, when a substantial majority of the population live on less than one euro a day. This unconstitutional change of government is a serious setback for democratisation.
We welcome the fact that the UN has appealed for nearly USD 36 million worth of humanitarian aid, anticipating the food shortages that will result later this year from the current political events in Madagascar, but we strongly condemn the coup d’état and all attempts to seize power by undemocratic means. We call for the immediate restoration of the legal and constitutional order in the country and ask all Malagasy parties to comply fully with the provisions of the constitution. We want to see the suspension of the National Assembly and Senate lifted and urge that the mandates and immunities of parliamentarians be respected.
But this is only going to happen if the international community can work together to step up its efforts and exercise pressure to end the political violence and the political impasse in that country."@en1
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