Final results of referendum on Madagascar's constitution announced

Over 75 percent of Madagascans approved the constitutional amendment, the High Constitutional Court (HCC) announced here on Friday.

In a ceremony to announce the final results of national referendum early this month, HCC President Rajaonarivony Jean Michel said 75.33 percent of the voters gave "yes" vote while 24. 67 percent of them were against it.

The results are exactly the same as they were announced by the Interior Ministry three weeks earlier.

HCC is empowered to announce the final results of any national elections after some 20 days of investigations of the results accounted by the Interior Ministry, according to Madagascan law.

According to reports received by the HCC after the referendum, 551 out of 3,224,088 votes had been canceled due to nonconformity to the law on the preparation of the election while there had been no casting in 40 out of 17,586 polling stations in certain districts of the island country.

The national referendum on revision of constitution, which had also been approved by a referendum in 1992, was held on April.

President Marc Ravalomanana said on several occasions that the revision would accelerate economic development of the Indian Ocean island and create favorite conditions to realize the targets of the government economic plan, published last March.

Analysts here said President Revalomanana, re-elected for second five-year term last December, intended to consolidate his power through the revision of the constitution.

Under the revised constitution, all six autonomous provinces will be abolished with an aim to excise a better management of the country and the development of local will be mainly based at village and district levels.

English is now another national language as well as Malagasy and French for Madagascar, which won its independence from France in 1960s.

Currently, French is the official language in Madagascar, home to some 18 million people, while Malagasy is its national tongue.

The Madagascan government is eager to attract foreign investment to implement its ambitious economic plan.

"We have begun using English more and more," said Jean-Eric Rakotoarisoa, one of the officials who drafted the proposed new basic law.

"Madagascar has joined Anglophone bodies like the SADC ( Southern African Development Community). Therefore some communication will be in English," he told the media earlier this month.

"Because we want to attract investors, it is important that the laws on investment be written in English so that Anglophones get interested in our market," Rakotoarisoa added.

Madagascar has followed the example of Rwanda, a tiny central African nation that in 2002 adopted English as one of the country's three official languages, although not via a referendum.

Source: Xinhua