Build committees of action and self-defence units! For a workers and poor peasant government!

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 15.10.2025, www.thecommunists.net

1.           After three weeks of mass demonstrations and street battles, the popular masses in Madagascar have succeeded to overthrow the reactionary regime of President Andry Rajoelina. The mostly young demonstrators protested against widespread poverty, high costs of living, and state corruption. The country’s 31 million people face repeated power cuts that leave businesses and homes without electricity or running water for more than 12 hours. Madagascar holds one of the highest poverty rates in the world at about 75% and only a third of the population has access to electricity.

2.           The regime tried to brutally suppress the demonstrations, leaving 22 people dead and dozens of others injured. In response the protesters expanded their demands and called for the immediate end of Rajoelina’s 15-year-old regime, the dismantling of the Senate, the electoral commission, and the constitutional court, as well as the prosecution of “the businessman close to the president”, referring to Rajoelina’s adviser and businessman, Maminiaina Ravatomanga. Furthermore, the movement demands a “free, egalitarian and united society”.

3.           As the popular uprising expanded, some soldiers started to openly sympathise with the masses. The turning point was when CAPSAT, an elite unit based on the outskirts of the capital Antananarivo, officially declared that it would not longer follow the orders of the regime. When other sectors of the army followed, Rajoelina recognised that he had lost power and fled the country on a French military aircraft.

4.           There exists the danger that those military units which helped to topple the despised President might want to exploit the chaotic situation and the lack of experience of the unorganised mass movement for their own advantage.

5.           The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) strongly welcomes the successful uprising of the young workers and poor in Madagascar! Their rebellion is part of a global process of popular uprisings which are shaking capitalist governments all over the world in the last few weeks – in Indonesia, Nepal, in the India- as well as the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir, Philippines, Morocco, Ecuador, Paraguay, etc. Another important element of this global process is the great pro-Palestine solidarity movement which has experienced now a new peak with international mass mobilisations of millions of people and three general strikes in Italy and another one in Spain. The current developments might open a pre-revolutionary or even revolutionary world situation similar to the one which we saw in the second half of the year 2019.

6.           Similar to other Gen Z uprisings, the protest movement in Madagascar has a very spontaneous character. The central task now is to transform the spontaneous protests into a victorious revolution. The most important precondition for this is that the masses organize themselves in action committees in workplaces and neighbourhoods. Such committees should discuss and decide about the next steps of the struggle. They should elect delegates and coordinate themselves on a local, regional and national level. Furthermore, they need to create self-defence groups so that they can impose order by themselves without being dependent on army units.

7.           In order to consolidate and deepen the ongoing democratic revolution, the workers and poor peasants must strive to take power. Such a workers and poor peasant government should be based on popular councils and militias. Among its most important tasks will be the nationalisation of foreign as well as domestic corporations and banks under workers’ control, the expropriation of the big landowners so that the land can be handed over to the small and landless peasants, and the replacement of the repressive state apparatus by popular militias. Likewise, it is crucial to smash the corrupt state bureaucracy and justice and to replace it with popularly elected and controlled officials who get only an average skilled workers income. Furthermore, links with all imperialist institutions and Great Powers – the U.S., Japan and Western Europe as well as China and Russia – must be ruptured and, at the same, such a government should work towards internationalising the revolution in order to overcome domination by imperialist powers.

8.           We reiterate the necessity to build a revolutionary party as part of a new international, based on the socialist program of permanent revolution. The existence of such a party is the precondition to avoid that the revolution gets hijacked by ambitious officers or “honest” figures who turn out to be pro-imperialist servants (like Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh). It is urgent bring together the politically most advanced fighters in a revolutionary party on the basis of a scientific Marxist program. The RCIT urges those who agree with such a perspective to unite and join us in building a new Revolutionary World Party.

International Bureau of the RCIT