Reconciliation out of question amid continuing instability: Eurasia Review

The CNI report absolving the present government, its security forces and the politicians of any wrong doing must have come as a big shock to former President Nasheed. It was unexpected and unreal. This should again prove to Nasheed that in politics idealism does not pay, writes Dr S Chandrasekharan for the Eurasia Review.

The immediate reaction of Nasheed was one of disbelief. He said that: “it left Maldives in a very awkward and in many ways a very comical situation when toppling the government by brute force is taken to be a very reasonable course of action.”

Nasheed’s hopes that elections will be held early will not be fulfilled when the present government under President Waheed and former president Gayoom who is the adviser from behind the scenes will ensure that Nasheed is prevented at any cost from contesting the next elections.

In this, it appears that the judiciary will also go against Nasheed with a vengeance. It is known that the judiciary in the current dispensation is the weakest link in Maldives. One should read in detail the book by Aishath Velezinee –“The Failed Silent Coup,” that describes how the judicial commission with outside help managed to make incompetent judges get permanent positions in the judicial system!

Nasheed made the biggest mistake in allowing this fraud to be perpetrated when he was in a justifiable position to take action. Instead he overreached subsequently in arresting the Chief Criminal Judge Abdulla which finally resulted in the coup.

Nasheed should take note of the following:

1. The present government is stacked with pro Gayoom people in important positions and will do everything to marginalise Nasheed and his MDP. One should look at the following list of people in important positions in the present government. They are all Gayoom’s people!

• Dunya Maumoon – Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Gayoom’s daughter)
• Ghassan Maumoon- Minister of State for Human Resources (Gayoom’s son)
• Abdul Samad Abdulla – Minister of Foreign Affairs (PPM member)
• Abdulla Jihad – Minister of Finance and Treasury (Gayoom’s former Finance Minister)
• Mohamed Waheed Deen – Vice President (Gayoom’s former Attorney General)
• Azima Shakooru – Attorney General (former Attorney General under Gayoom in 2007)
• Mohamed Husain Sharif Mundu – Minister of Youth Affairs (PPM Spokesperson)
• Ismail Shafeeu – CoNI co-chair (Gayoom’s former Minister of Defence and National Security)
• Ahmed Mujuthaba – Mediator in all-party talks (Gayoom’s former Minister of Tourism)

Waheed’s government will not go for any dialogue unless it is on their terms. There are pious hopes from analysts in India, the media and even some from the Indian establishment that dialogue is the best way forward to resolve the present crisis in Maldives. Soon after the CNI report, the MDP made an offer to join the present coalition government. This was summarily dismissed both by President Waheed who was outside the country and the government spokesman Abas Adil Riza who derisively rejected it with his comment that the “attempt of MDP to join the government lacked sincerity.”

Reconciliation is therefore out of question and there should concerns for continuing instability in Maldives. The brutal killing recently of PPM MP Dr Afrasheem, considered as an Islamic moderate, should be cause for concern.

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