Ten years of hard labor. That is the sentence handed down to General Richard Ravalomanana, who was found guilty of complicity in murder, voluntary assault and battery, and attempted murder. The verdict fell like a bomb. True to the nickname of the former Senate president, whose fate has known ups and downs since his removal from the Anosikely seat. A carefully orchestrated political maneuver was supposed to lead to the declaration of a vacancy in the position of president of the upper chamber by the HCC, in its decision of October 14, 2025, which marked the beginning for the retired general of the army. Even though "a soldier is never retired for the nation," according to the Red Admiral, who was also sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in August 2003 for embezzlement of 7 million euros. In short, it can be said: 49 billion Mofo Gasy francs at the exchange rate of the national currency of that time. Since the sentence was pronounced in absentia, "Deba" was not entitled to the yellow and black striped suit like the Daltons. General "Bomb" will also be spared from wearing the regulation convict uniform, which is no longer "in fashion" in penitentiaries. It is like hard labor, which belongs to a bygone era, dating back to the Napoleonic penal code of 1810. Gone is the cliché of the convict dragging a ball and chain or chained to another prisoner. There is moreover no longer a penal colony dedicated to condemnation to the galleys or irons, which is commuted in fact to criminal imprisonment for a fixed term as far as General Richard Ravalomanana is concerned. It is a manifestly archaic and presumably political criminal sentence, which could not be applied to persons over 60 years of age, according to the Court of Cassation in France, where hard labor was to be abolished under the Fifth Republic. At the dawn of the Fifth Republic, the sentence is applied without distinction of age in Madagascar as in the gulag camp in Russia.