Madagascar, 1982 — military coup conspiracy
Event Summary
This entry is coded 24 January 1982, during the year before the November 1982 presidential election in which President Didier Ratsiraka of Madagascar was re-elected. Ratsiraka, a naval officer who took power in 1975 and built a Marxist-Maoist one-party state around his AREMA party, faced mounting popular resentment in the early 1980s amid a steeply declining economy, epidemics, famines, and natural disasters, while abandoning strict socialist policies for IMF-recommended reforms. His regime rested on a history of instability and conspiracy: his immediate predecessor as head of state, Richard Ratsimandrava, had been assassinated in a 1975 conspiracy only days after taking office.
Reports also circulated of Ratsiraka and his loyalists unlawfully enriching themselves from the country's mineral resources. The 24 January 1982 coding sits in this period of regime instability and plotting against Ratsiraka in the run-up to his 1982 re-election with a reported 80 percent of the vote.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
58001241982
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Ratsiraka was re-elected in 1982 and remained Madagascar's dominant figure until 1993.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Globe and Mail
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →