On September 12, 2025, President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar stood before the United Nations and declared that things were going well. But that wasn’t true. Madagascar’s situation was turning catastrophic. In fact, at this same time, a cousin of mine on a mission there was emailing home about mayhem that looked to him and the other missionaries like civil war. Rajoelina presents a great case study in what not to do when running a country. For all the heads of state reading this article, take notes: these are the biggest political sins of Andry Rajoelina. Avoid them at all costs.
First, don’t tell your people that something is dandy when they feel it is a disaster. In September, Rajoelina told the UN that Madagascar’s infrastructure was improving: 66% growth of power-providing capacity over the last 6 years. But the accuracy of these claims is debatable, and completely rejected by the Malagasy people. All they see are constant power and water shortages disrupting their lives and damaging public health. Protests and riots started up on the exact day that Rajoelina gave his UN speech and continued until his ousting.
Across the Atlantic, American politicians from both sides of the aisle have fallen into essentially the same error. During Biden’s administration, Democrats assured Americans that the economy was fine; voters felt otherwise. Trump and Vance are now doing the same thing. They’re telling people that things are moving in the right direction and asking for patience; but voters don’t feel that things are going well. And in a democracy, what voters feel the truth is matters to them more at the ballot box than whatever the actual truth may be.
Republicans are already taking hits for this. Proof can be found in the most recent elections, such as the recent attorney general race in Virginia. In September, Gen Z Malagasy students began organizing protests via Facebook. (By the way, Gen Z has been at the heart of influential protests all over the world over the last few months, from Madagascar and Morocco to Nepal.) [1]. The more the government resisted by declaring curfews and using rubber and real bullets, the more enraged and united the people became. Instead of saying that things are hunky dory, politicians should empathize and sympathize with their people, while simultaneously building and implementing the best policies they can.
Second, don’t acquire power by shady means. If you do, it’ll come back to bite you later. In 2009, Rajoelina pushed his way to winning the presidential election so aggressively that it was called a coup d’état. To make a long story short, he took advantage of both civil unrest and the military unit CAPSAT to ascend to power. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, that very same military unit has thrown him out and installed one of their own as an interim president.
CAPSAT then suspended every government institution except for the Malagasy National Assembly. That National Assembly ignored Rajoelina’s long-distance (he’s fled the country) command for it to dissolve itself, instead impeaching him almost unanimously [2]. And no one paid attention to Rajoelina’s calls for peace and an end to violence, even though that was the right thing to do. He was ignored because the Malagasy remember when back in 2009, Rajoelina’s own campaigning led to all kinds of destruction and the deaths of 170 people.
Finally, don’t mismanage the economy. Madagascar has already been in dire straits for a long time. It’s one of the world’s poorest and most dehydrated nations. Hundreds of thousands died by a drought-induced famine in 2021, with 1 million more on the verge of starvation [3]. In the 1970s, the World Bank had to swoop in and save the country from self-inflicted bankruptcy.
Rajoelina isn’t the source of all Madagascar’s problems, but his policy hasn’t been great either. For example, take his sponsoring construction of a $152 million cable car covering just 13 kilometers of distance. The project has mystified most Malagasy [4]. How, they ask, is this the best possible investment of all that capital? It’s not as though they have piles of cash to throw at all kinds of projects. 80% of the country lives below the poverty line, one in two children face chronic malnutrition, most of the country’s roads are unpaved, and the government is building… a cable car?
Rajoelina worsened his optics by comparing the project to the Eiffel Tower, an oversized lamppost that feeds zero starving children. Furthermore, his family’s lavish lifestyle and dual citizenship in France (Madagascar’s traditional oppressor) have undermined his authority and rapport with the people. All of these stressors and mistakes led to his downfall.
As Madagascar opens a new chapter, I hope we and they can learn from the past. Rajoelina wasn’t a monster, but he was a terrible leader who paid the price for glossing over problems, unprincipled power-seeking, and plain old bad governance. Unless we learn from his downfall and arrest these damaging political patterns whenever they pop up, karma is liable to come knocking for us as it did for Ex-President Andry Rajoelina. And looking less than pleased.