Games presidents play

JUN 24 -

The election of Mohamed Nasheed on June 17, 2012 as the next Presidential candidate of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) explains Nasheed’s own failures and challenges. The current President, Mohamed Waheed Hassan has however repeatedly stated that that the earliest date elections can be held is July 2013. President Hassan currently enjoys support of the international community and does not appear to be in a hurry to hold elections.

If that is the case, why did Nasheed declare himself the party’s Presidential candidate? This is particularly questionable as not only are elections far away, but the Commission of National Inquiry, established to make an independent and impartial investigation into developments in the Maldives from January 14, 2012 to February 8, 2012, is yet to complete the investigation. The Commission has representatives of the Commonwealth and the United Nations and cannot be dismissed by the MDP at this stage.

It appears that Nasheed’s candidature was declared to address inner-party squabbling rather than to force President Hassan to hold the elections. In April, MDP’s President Ibrahim Didi and Vice President Alhan Fahmy were ousted from the party and they blamed Nasheed personally for instigating their ejection. The election of Nasheed as the unopposed Presidential candidate of the MDP only buttresses the allegations about the lack of inner-party democracy under Nasheed. Is Nasheed a classic case of a pro-democracy activist turning into a dictator?

When the current constitution of Maldives was being negotiated, Nasheed was allegedly not sure whether to opt for the presidential or parliamentary system as he was not sure about defeating the then-President Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom. Ultimately, he went on to support an executive presidential system with parliamentary democracy in the hope that if Gayyoom could not be defeated, the MDP would control the parliament. He did defeat Gayyoom, but the parliament became his nemesis, as the opposition won a substantial number of seats in the parliament and blocked his reform initiatives.

As President, Nasheed’s term can be described as “nothing extraordinary,” though he puts all the blame on Gayyoom. Nasheed is most likely to be remembered for holding an underwater cabinet meeting in October 2009 to highlight the threat of global warming to the Maldives. The meeting did capture the attention of the international media, and Nasheed also allowed China to open its embassy in Male on November 8, 2011. By allowing China to open its mission, President Nasheed broke the unwritten agreement that foreign diplomatic missions should not be opened in Male, among others, because of the lack of space and the threat to the environment. Just imagine the impact if 194 countries were to open their embassies in Male, whose landscape is approximately two km-long and one km-wide, and densely populated with 70,000 inhabitants.

The decision to allow China to open its embassy is intriguing. It’s because even the United States has been looking after the affairs in Maldives from Colombo, and there was no urgent need for Nasheed to get Maldives entangled into the Indo-China rivalry. The timing of the opening of the Chinese embassy too was extremely poor. China opened the embassy on November 8, 2011 as India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Maldives on Novem-ber 9, 2011 to participate in the Saarc Summit. It was nothing short of a slap on the face for India, which has been providing security support to Mald-ives since the LTTE-led mercenaries tried to take over the country in 1988.

By allowing China to open the embassy in Male, Nasheed sought to change the existing balance of maritime security in the Indian Ocean. The opening of the Chinese embassy sent alarm bells to New Delhi and Washington, who have decided to bolster their presence in the Asia-Pacific. Not surprisingly, once Nasheed resigned in February 2012, which he later described as a decision taken at gun-point, the US took the same line as that of India to welcome President Hassan.

The United Kingdom initially supported Nasheed’s reinstatement, but it soon fell in line with India and the United States.

Nasheed has since been crying hoarse to claim that nothing much should be read into the establishment of the Chinese embassy in Male. He visited India in April 2012 to clarify and pressed for early elections. India gave a patient hearing but made no commitment. The US policy too is unlikely to change.

Following his ouster, Nasheed also raised the spectre of hardline Islamists ruling Maldives in the near future to garner Western and Indian support. But Nasheed failed to note that even Col. Gaddhafi, in his last days, raised the existence of the Al-Queda amongst the rebels, but there were few takers.

Whether and how President Nasheed entrapped himself into the situation that saw his exit will remain a mystery, but his order to the army to arrest Abdulla Mohamed, a senior criminal court judge, on corruption charges does not speak volumes about his democratic credentials. The allegation that the judge’s rulings—such as the release of an opposition activist detained without a warrant—were politically motivated ought to have been investigated before making the arrest. President Nasheed forgot that he too was incarcerated on mere allegations.

President Nasheed failed to realise that the future of Maldives does not lie in playing brinkmanship between India and China, but gradually strengthening the democratic institutions that he failed.  While it is true that all states are equal and they have the liberty to take decisions for their national interest, at the same time, security concerns of the neighbours cannot be ignored. Nasheed’s failure to foresee the consequences of changing the existing order in the maritime security in the Indian Ocean already cost him the President’s job and left the MDP further fractured.

Yet, there is little change as the declaration of his candidature as the MDP candidate for the Presidential election shows: Nasheed remains an amateur, adventurist, impatient, and at times naive and unconvincing. Sadly, Nasheed was once Maldives’ only ray of hope for democracy, but now he stands exposed to further scrutiny of his own democratic credentials at a time when the focus should be on President Hassan.

Chakma is Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights, Delhi