This title draws from a phrase by George Santayana (1863-1952, American-Hispanic writer and philosopher) that resonates with particular force when observing Madagascar's political history since independence. The infographic of Malagasy heads of state reveals not merely a succession of names, mandates, and transitions. It reveals a mechanism. Since 1960, Madagascar has not simply changed leaders. Madagascar regularly returns to the same point: political crisis, suspension of confidence, intervention by an exceptional authority, promise of refoundation, then fragile reconstruction of an institutional order that, years later, fractures again. The average length of mandates says something important. Looking at institutional sequences line by line, Madagascar rarely experiences long, peaceful cycles. Elected presidencies alternate with interim periods, transitions, depositions, and de facto periods. Some leaders lasted long, but the State itself remained unstable. Tsiranana, Ratsiraka, Ravalomanana, and Rajoelina embodied significant political durations. Yet their cycle endings were often marked by street unrest, crisis, obstruction, or rupture. This is the Malagasy paradox: the country has known many institutions, but too little institutional continuity. Many elections, but little lasting confidence in electoral verdicts. Many transitions, but few transformations. Many speeches of rupture, but often the return of the same power concentration practices. In this history, the Ratsiraka period occupies a particular place. It was not merely a long political sequence. It was an attempt at total redefinition of the State, school, economy, and sovereignty. Coming to power in the wake of the 1972 and 1975 crises, Didier Ratsiraka carried an ambition that initially responded to a real demand: escape the colonial face-off, break with French dependence, restore political and cultural dignity to the Malagasy people. Malgachization Malgachization lay at the heart of this ambition. It was not absurd in itself. Valuing the Malagasy language, rethinking school, adapting content to national realities, escaping intellectual dependence inherited from colonization: all this reflected a legitimate aspiration. Madagascar could not build itself durably if its school educated children in a language most poorly mastered, for a State reproducing colonial hierarchies. Research on language policies recalls that Malagasy was the teaching language in most schools before French colonization, and that colonial administration closed schools not using French. But the central question is not intention. It is method. And this is where history becomes a warning. Ratsirakaian malgachization often confused sovereignty with substitution. It sought to replace one system with another without adequately preparing teachers, textbooks, linguistic bridges, scientific tools, and opportunities. It claimed to liberate school, but contributed to disorganizing it. It sought to repair a colonial fracture, but produced a new social one: elites continued protecting their children through private schools, French, or abroad, while public school absorbed consequences of a poorly calibrated reform. This is one of Madagascar's tragedies. A just idea can become destructive when conducted as ideological proclamation rather than public policy. Recent studies on language policies in Madagascar emphasize persistence of unresolved Malagasy-French dualism, weak linguistic competencies in the school system, and effects of successive unfinished policies on learning. The economic infographic gives this reading additional depth. The Ratsiraka period 1976-1990 shows weak average annual GDP growth, around 0.89%, and negative per capita GDP growth, around -1.97%. In other words, the country could give appearance of a sovereign State, revolutionary discourse, and political stability, but the population was not growing richer. The 1991 crisis, following regime exhaustion, confirms the shock's violence: GDP and per capita GDP plunge. Proclaimed sovereignty had not produced productive sovereignty. Here the parallel with the current situation becomes concerning. The PRRM also arrives after profound crisis. It speaks of refoundation, sovereignty, rupture with the old system. It presents itself as an exceptional authority called to set the country upright.