# Madagascar president says coup is under way after soldiers join protests
Event date: 2025-10-12
Madagascar’s president said an attempted coup was underway after soldiers joined anti-government demonstrations in the capital, intensifying a crisis that had begun with public anger over basic services and economic hardship.
The AP report says soldiers were cheered in Antananarivo on Sunday as they appeared alongside protesters calling for President Andry Rajoelina to step down. The demonstrations, led largely by young people, had started over repeated electricity and water outages. By the time the military joined them, the protests had widened into a broader challenge to the government.
Rajoelina, speaking from an undisclosed location after what he described as an apparent coup attempt forced him into hiding, said the situation had crossed a dangerous line. The report says he had already left the country in fear for his life after the military rebellion.
At the center of the crisis is CAPSAT, Madagascar’s elite military unit. Its commander, Col. Michael Randrianirina, was among those whose troops moved toward the presidency and signaled that the armed forces were taking control. That gave the unrest a new and far more serious character than the student-led protests that had preceded it.
The AP says demonstrators were not organized around a single leader, but they were united by frustration over conditions that have long shaped life in Madagascar. Protesters cited power cuts, water shortages, corruption, the cost of living, access to higher education and persistent poverty. One protester said that if children study in darkness, the country’s future is put at risk.
The unrest also spread the sense that Madagascar’s politics remain vulnerable to breakdown. CAPSAT is the same unit that turned against the government in 2009 and helped Rajoelina take power. That historical irony is central to the current moment: the man who once benefited from military intervention is now facing it.
The AP report says the military’s move came as protests intensified and crowds packed a main square in the capital. Rajoelina’s office accused the armed forces of trying to seize power illegally, while the protesters insisted that change was necessary.
Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa, has repeatedly struggled with coups and political instability since independence from France in 1960. The events of 2025 fit that pattern, but the breadth of youth participation and the speed with which soldiers joined them have made the crisis especially severe.
What began as a protest over utilities has become a direct struggle over who controls the state.
