Madagascar Bars Exiled Former Leader

Padangekspres.net-The ex-president of Madagascar, overthrown in a 2009 military coup, was blocked Saturday from returning home, dealing another setback to his bid to lead the island nation again.
An hour before landing Saturday, Madagascar authorities closed the country's airports, forcing Marc Ravalomanana, the 62-year-old ousted leader, to return to South Africa, according to a spokesman. The plane landed back in Johannesburg in the afternoon, the spokesman, Patrick Gearing, said.

The day before, Ravalomanana told reporters he planned to run again for office in "internationally supervised, free and fair elections" to be held at a later date by the transition government.
"I'm going back to make peace, not war," he said, holding his plane tickets aloft.
Ravalomanana said his return to the vanilla-rich island of 22 million off Africa's southeastern coast resulted from a breakthrough in talks to resolve the three-year political crisis.
But the former yogurt salesman's safe passage back to politics and Madagascar's peaceful transition to democracy is far from assured.
Madagascar authorities have said Ravalomanana would be jailed upon his return. The president of the transition government is a rival, Andry Rajoelina, a former nightclub DJ who came to power in the wake of the coup that toppled Ravalomanana.
Even after a new road map to elections was signed in September 2011, security officials reissued an arrest warrant for Ravalomanana.
A spokesman for Rajoelina could not be reached to comment.
Ravalomanana, who became a self-made millionaire selling yogurt, originally from his bicycle, used his business acumen to transform one of the world's poorest countries into one of Africa's most promising economies.
But critics accuse him of marshaling his political clout in later years to expand his commercial empire.
In June 2009, after fleeing to South Africa, Ravalomanana was sentenced by a Madagascar court to four years in jail for "abuse of office."
He has denied all charges against him, saying he was tried in a "kangaroo court of an illegal government."

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