JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Weeks of nationwide Gen Z protests in Madagascar over power and water shortages have escalated and led to a military coup that forced President Andry Rajuelina into exile. Army officer Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as the new leader of the Indian Ocean nation.
The colonel is not the first in history to rise from the barracks to the presidential palace.
Here are five other famous military leaders who followed a similar path:
Minimar – Mini Aung Blaing
After decades of gradual and deliberate advancement through the ranks of the Myanmar military, Min Aung Hlaing was appointed joint chief of staff of the army, navy and air force in 2010, the third-highest position in the military. A year later he was appointed commander-in-chief and spent the next decade consolidating his power and influence.
Facing mandatory retirement in July 2021, Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a military coup in February that year, declaring a state of emergency, transferring all state power to himself and creating a military government, the State Administration Council (SAC). Since then he has ruled Myanmar under different titles. The military government has announced plans to hold general elections by the end of the year.
Uganda – Idi Amin
Idi Amin began his military career as a cook and served in the British colonial army. After Uganda gained independence in 1962, he quickly rose through the ranks under President Milton Obote to become commander of the army. In January 1971, Obote was in Singapore for a Commonwealth summit when Amin took power in a military coup. Obote fled to neighboring Tanzania after the coup, which was the result of growing political and personal animosity between the two men.
Ugandans initially welcomed Amin's rise to power as he promised to release political prisoners and restore democracy. However, his regime quickly became a brutal dictatorship characterized by violence and human rights violations.
Amin himself was overthrown in April 1979 by an invading force consisting of Tanzanian military and Ugandan rebels.
Türkiye – Kenan Evren
Kenan Evren began his military career as a military academy officer, 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 Turkey 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 military's political power. The military dissolved parliament and ruled the country through the National Security Council, of which Evren was head, effectively ruling the country as a dictator.
His period of sole military rule ended when he formally assumed the title of seventh President of Turkey in November 1982, after a new constitution was approved in a referendum, a position he held until November 1989.
He was put on trial in 2012 for leading a coup and was later sentenced to life in prison for crimes against the state.
Ghana – Jerry Rawlings
Jerry Rawlings came to power through two military coups, first in June 1979 and then in December 1981, before passing to a democratically elected president.
Rawlings, a Ghana Air Force pilot, became famous for the successful first coup he led. He briefly held the position of ruler of Ghana before relinquishing it.
In a second coup in 1981, he overthrew the civilian government and headed the military dictatorship of the Provisional National Defense Council in the early 1990s. Following the drafting of a new constitution in 1992, he was democratically elected president and served two four-year terms, from January 1993 to January 2001.
His legacy is complex, ranging from praise for his economic reforms to criticism of human rights abuses 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, Allende, the democratically elected Socialist president, was overthrown in a bloody military coup led by Pinochet. The military surrounded and bombed the La Moneda presidential palace, where Allende remained until his death by suicide.
The military then installed a junta, with Pinochet as its sole leader, and then established a brutal 17-year dictatorship. Before 1990, Chileans lived through a period of systematic human rights violations and radical free-market economic policies.
