NAIROBI: Didier Ratsiraka, Madagascar’s former ruler, fled the country on Friday, seemingly ending the violent seven-month-long leadership dispute and the flickering threat of civil war.

As he took off from the eastern city of Toamasina, his last stronghold on the island state he ruled for 22 years, President Marc Ravalomanana’s army closed in.

“We are advancing on the city, we are opening the roads, we are dealing with security. The problem is almost over,” Ravalomanana, a self-made yoghurt tycoon, told the London-based Guardian newspaper by phone from the capital, Antananarivo. “Ratsiraka, he’s gone.”

Ratsiraka lost the presidential election to Ravalomanana in December, but contested the result and refused to stand aside. In February he was driven from Antananarivo by a million generally peaceful protesters.

Thereafter he claimed Toamasina as his capital, and threatened to split the country unless Ravalomanana gave up his claim to the presidency.

With the army reluctant to get involved, Madagascar’s institutions were paralysed by the stand-off. The two men each appointed a head of the central bank, causing complete confusion among creditors. Ratsiraka’s hired militiamen blew up bridges and barricaded roads leading to Antananarivo, starving the city of fuel and food.

Two months ago the deadlock eased when a recount confirmed Ravalomanana as the outright victor. Most army divisions rallied behind him, dismantled the roadblocks, and herded Ratsiraka’s hirelings towards Toamasina.

On Thursday Ravalomanana’s troops entered the key northern city of Antsiranana, where joyful residents said they had been trapped in their houses for almost two weeks as Ratsiraka’s thugs looted the town.

A senior army officer was killed in a gunfight with fleeing militia at a roadblock in Brickaville, which cut the main road between Toamasina and the capital.

On Thursday, too, three of Ratsiraka’s senior officials were caught as they tried to board a boat for Mauritius. Then, hours later, Ratsiraka himself flew off with his wife and two brothers to the Seychelles. Two planes loaded with his former ministers left Toamasina’s airstrip shortly afterwards.

Ravalomanana said he was unconcerned about the fate of Ratsiraka, who is now in a beach hotel closed off from journalists. “I don’t care about him so much. We’ve got to start work rebuilding this country,” he said.

But the information minister, Elie Rajaonerison, predicted that Ratsiraka would be tried by the international criminal court for corruption and atrocities committed during his rule.

“It’s a good thing to see Ratsiraka go. But the Malagasy people must see him brought to justice,” he said.

With French support, Ratsiraka, a self-appointed admiral, turned the country of 16 million people into a model African kleptocracy, and one of the world’s poorest countries. But on Wednesday France followed the lead of other European countries and the US in formally recognizing Ravalomanana as president, and unfreezing their aid.

The Organization of African Unity, which had been asked to resolve the stand-off, was undecided the other day whether to recognize Ravalomanana. Its assistant secretary general, Vijay Makhan, said that no Malagasy representative had been invited to the current conference in Durban, because “the OAU does not recognize either Ravalomanana or Ratsiraka as president”.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.