Global Voices Online

Two bloggers report photos and proceedings of political meeting in Antananarivo as tension between mayor Andry Rajoelina and  current president Marc Ravalomanana arises over the closing of a national TV station (mg).  Avylavitra posted photos of attendance at the meeting and Jentilisa wrote a comprehensive timeline of the events (mg).

After a series of prison breaks around Madagascar last week, Jentilisa reports that another prison near Toamasina ( East coast of Madagascar) was set on fire today ( Jan 13th) (mg).  Eyewitnesses reported heavy smoke and  5 gun shots. The causes of the fire or the gun shots are still to be determined.

Dotmg announces that the free Malagasy spell checker he has been developing is now operational. The software, which is, as far as I know the first of its kind, is:”opensource, and is released under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (or above). It is part of a larger project called tsipelina, and the project is available on tsipelina.sourceforge.net. It requires PHP and a webserver, as it is written in PHP.”

Gazety Avylavitra publishes photos of the very public arrest of one of the leaders of the political opposition Henri Lecacheur at the marketplace on friday morning (8/29/008) by a SWAT team wearing face masks(mg).

There was a bit of confusion about the number of people who will be part of the Malagasy delegation in the 2008 Olympics. Official reports were not disclosed until a few days ago when we learned that 7 athletes will participate (fr) instead of the four initially announced at the beginning of the month (en). Moreover, the number of non-athletes official delegates is still unknown but all of the 107 gold medalists at the latest Indian Ocean Olympics Games will attend the games in Beijing as invitees of the president (fr).

Lova Rabary-Rakotondravony explains that the government of Madagascar has sent four delegates to Honk Kong to try to retrieve one of the heaviest and largest emerald on matrix in the world currently on display at the Baoqu Tang Modern Art Gallery in Honk Kong (fr). The Malagasy government claims that the stone is part of the national patrimony whereas Chan SicPo, the artist who obtained the license to display the stone, states that he purchased the license from the rightful owner of the stone, a mining company based in Reunion called Orgaco (en).

Jayne Taylor Gaubatz, a Peace Corps volunteer blogger in the southern city of Fianaratsoa, describes the impact of a well-done family planning poster, the importance of baby weighing in tandem and attending a Malagasy gospel choir [en].

While the football world is enjoying the UEFA European Football Championship, many countries in Africa are restricted to watching 8 tournament games. Jentilisa, blogging from Madagascar, explains that the number of games to be broadcasted was decided by AFNEX (African Network and News Exchange) who bought the rights to the tournament in the region for African national televisions. He argues that Africa is home to many of the elite players who play in major European clubs and soon home of the next FIFA World Cup 2010 in South-Africa and the tournament should not be restricted to rich people who owns satellite dishes. He wishes that Chinese TV CCTV would dispute this monopoly in the future and lower the broadcasting fees for resource limited nations (fr and mg).

Jentilisa reports that the popular radio program “karajia” (discussion in Malagasy) braodcasted by the Roman Catholic Church Radio called Radio Don Bosco was suspended by the government. This suspension was also reported on a popular broadcast called ” kidoana maraina” on Radio Television Analamanga (RTA). Jentilisa explains that the reason for the suspension was to prevent a supposed-call for strike made on the radio broadcast by one of the listeners. Jentilisa is worried that this abuse of power may lead to internet censorship if this trend continues [Mg].