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Weeks of nationwide Gen-Z protests madagascar Conditions worsened due to power and water shortages and a military coup that forced President Andry Rajoelina into exile. Army officer Colonel Michael Randrianirina has been sworn in as the new leader of the Indian Ocean nation.
The Colonel is not the first person in history to reach Rashtrapati Bhavan from the barracks.
Here are five other famous military leaders who followed a similar trajectory:
myanmar — Min Aung Hlaing
After decades of gradual, deliberate climb through the Myanmar military, Min Aung Hlaing was appointed Joint Chief of Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force in 2010, the military’s third-highest position. A year later, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief and would spend the next decade consolidating his power and influence.
Facing mandatory retirement in July 2021, Min Aung Hlaing seized power through a military coup in February that year, declared a state of emergency, transferred all state power to himself and established a military government, the State Administration Council (SAC). Since then he has ruled Myanmar under various titles. The military government has announced plans to hold general elections by the end of the year.
uganda – Idi Amin
idi amin He began his military career as a cook and served in the British colonial army. Following Uganda’s 1962 independence, he rose rapidly through the military ranks to become Army Commander under the guidance of President Milton Obote. In January 1971, Obote was in Singapore for the Commonwealth summit when Amin took control in a military coup. Obote fled to neighboring Tanzania after the coup, a result of the two men’s growing political and personal animosity.
Ugandans initially welcomed Amin’s coming to power, as he promised to release political prisoners and restore democracy. However, his rule rapidly degenerated into a brutal dictatorship characterized by violence and human rights abuses.
Amin himself was overthrown in April 1979 by an invasion force composed of Tanzanian forces and Ugandan rebels.
Türkiye – Kenan Evren
Kenan Evren began his military career as an officer from a military academy, rising through the ranks over several decades until he reached the highest rank of general, serving as Chief of the General Staff. He led a military coup in Türkiye in September 1980 after months of violence between left-wing and right-wing militants that nearly plunged the country into civil war.
The coup leader assumed the presidency and then rewrote the constitution to guarantee the political power of the military. The military dissolved parliament and ruled through a National Security Council, headed by Evren, and effectively ran the country as a dictator.
His period of sole military rule ended when he formally assumed the office of the seventh President of Turkey in November 1982 after a new constitution was approved by referendum, and he served until November 1989.
In 2012, he was tried for leading a coup and later sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against the state.
Ghana – Jerry Rawlings
Jerry Rawlings came to power through two military coups, first in June 1979 and again in December 1981, before becoming the first democratically elected president.
Rawlings, a pilot in the Ghana Air Force, became famous for leading his first successful coup. He held the position of ruler of Ghana for some time before handing it over to Ghana.
In a second coup in 1981, he toppled the civilian government and assumed command of the military dictatorship of the Provisional National Defense Council in the early 1990s. After drafting a new constitution in 1992, he was democratically elected as President and served two four-year terms from January 1993 to January 2001.
His legacy is complex, including both praise for his economic reforms and criticism for human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances.
Chile- Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet was a career military officer who rose through the ranks and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army by Chilean President Salvador Allende in August 1973. The following month, democratically elected socialist President Allende was overthrown in a bloody military coup led by Pinochet. The army surrounded and bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda, where Allende lived until his death by suicide.
Subsequently, the military installed a junta where Pinochet emerged to establish himself as its sole head before establishing a brutal 17-year dictatorship. Until the 1990s, Chileans lived in a period marked by systematic human rights abuses and the implementation of radical free-market economic policies.