Author: N SathiyaMoorthy

Comment: The importance of presidential candidates’ meeting

Even as the rest of the world – and Maldivians too – had almost given up the country as being on the brink of a political and leadership chaos, it has bounced back with the kind of verve and nerve that democracy entails at birth. The three presidential candidates met in what was not an entirely unexpected turn, and declared their intention to try and complete the poll process in time for an elected president to assume office on 11 November, the D-day under the constitutional scheme and national tradition.

Meeting on Sunday night, former President Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), and his rivals, Abdulla Yameen of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and Gasim Ibrahim of the Jumhooree Party (JP), unanimously decided to approach the Election Commission (EC) for advancing the poll-dates. If their combined effort next morning when the met the EC officials did not fructify, it owed to the existing electoral scheme – or, so it would seem.

As may be recalled, the EC had fixed 9 November for the first-round and 16 November for the second-round of the once-annulled and once-cancelled polls. The tradition under the continuing constitutional scheme for decades now has been for the elected president to assume office on 11 November. With the second-round of polls, if required for the victor to possess the mandated 50-percent vote-support, scheduled for 16 November, questions have begun to be asked from the highest levels on the possibilities of an emerging constitutional vacuum.

In their meeting, the three candidates claimed to have worked out a scheme for verification of the voters’ list individually. Whatever that may be, they seemed desirous to let nothing – including the possibly an allegedly faulty voter-list – come in the way of completing the poll process. Claims of ‘faulty voter-list’ were among the causes for presidential polls, originally scheduled for 7 and 28 September, getting inordinately and at times inadvertently delayed.

During their meeting on Sunday night, the three candidates decided to urge the EC to advance the first round to 2 November and the second round, if needed, to 9 November. Clearly, they wanted the poll process to be completed in time for the elected one from among them to assume office on 11 November. None of them wanted a constitutional vacuum to emerge in the country during its democratic infancy, particularly after incumbent President Mohammed Waheed expressed a desire to step aside before the deadline for transition.

Going by local media reports, the three candidates meeting the waiting media together after their talks with EC officials, did not elaborate on the EC’s reasons for not being able to conduct the polls. While drafting earlier poll-schedules, the EC had provided the required 21 days for completing the administrative work, comprising re-registration of new voters and those wanting to vote in a booth other than originally assigned. The latter in particular should have thrown up problems while advancing the poll after re-registration had been set in motion.

Under the law, any Maldivian citizen attaining 18 years of age on the day of (first-round) polling are entitled to register their names as voters. After the EC had fixed 9 November as the day for first-round polling and opened re-registration, advancing the poll dates would have been fraught with complications that the constitution’s framers did not foresee, and hence did not provide for. Nor did the 4-3 verdict of the Supreme Court that annulled the 7 September poll and setting out a 16-point guideline for re-poll provide for.

With all sections of parliament involved in the three-candidate negotiations, getting an emergency constitutional amendment Bill through the People’s Majlis would have been a formality. Outgoing President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, who readily endorsed the three-candidate decision, may have also given his assent to such a constitutional amendment. Should any citizen affected by the measure go to the court, however, the process by itself would have been time-consuming, defeating the very purpose of the poll-advancement idea.

‘No’ to military rule

The three-candidate meeting and their meaningful proposal has brought back political pragmatism to the nation’s centre-table, where electoral expediency and excesses alone seemed to rule for a time. President Waheed, who had not very long ago dubbed himself the ‘most hated person’ for the international community and media, set the ball rolling instead, by sounding out the possibility of his resigning from office along with his entire Cabinet, including Vice-President Waheed Deen, for Parliament Speaker, Abdulla Shahid, to take over for a 60-day election-period, as per the Constitution. He followed it up with a letter to Parliament

With the MDP’s Nasheed having won the highest 45.45 percent vote-share in the annulled first-round, the party-led alliance jumped at President Waheed’s proposal. It got the house to pass a resolution on those lines. This is to be followed by a formal bill on the same subject in the coming days, it is said. However, such a course would require a constitutional amendment. The non-MDP alliance parties had boycotted the earlier vote on the resolution. They can be expected to boycott the vote on the upcoming Bill, also, should the MDP still go ahead with the proposal after the three-candidate confabulation.

To the extent the three candidates, their parties and coalitions have been able to distinguish between political realities, electoral exigencies and constitutional compulsions, the nation has been brought back from the brink. Likewise, the Jumhooree Coalition’s Hassan Saeed, vice-presidential running-mate to Gasim Ibrahim, has shot down the proposition of a possible term of ‘military rule’ post 11/11, if the first-round poll of 9 November does not produce a president-elect. The coalition was not considering the option, Saeed said a day after JP parliamentary group leader, Ilham Ahmed, had proposed the same in the house on Sunday.

Air of permissiveness

The JP – and other political outfits – may be in for a time of introspection, if not explanation, a vandal attacked the Indian High Commissioner’s car outside of the diplomatic mission. The car’s wind-screen was damaged, but fortunately, no one was inside the vehicle at the time. Earlier in the day, JP’s mouth-piece, Miadhu, quoted party Secretary-General Hussein Shah as saying that “a foreign Ambassador (had) requested (party founder and presidential candidate Gasim) not to go to court even if there is any vote-manipulations”.

The police are investigating the car-attack. In diplomatic terms, the attack means more for bilateral relations than may be visible and acceptable. Shah’s unsubstantiated claims and the attack on the Indian envoy’s car may have been independent episodes, but both are also reflective of an ‘air of permissiveness’ that has permeated down the democratic political culture in the country. On an earlier occasion, a senior aide of President Waheed attacked the then Indian High Commissioner by name. He was shifted out to a different position, which was considered an elevation, not a punishment, of sorts.

Needless to point out that the President’s Office, Parliament, the police and armed forces headquarters are all within a stone’s throw of the Indian High Commission. The stone that fell on the Indian side could very well have fallen on the other side, too. It only goes on to indicate the precarious nature of the nation’s politics and politics-driven people’s posturing just now. It comes a year and half after the prevailing mood and methods of this kind culminated in the controversial resignation of President Nasheed on 7 February 2012. Each party and politician continues to have a different take and cause for the events, versions and justifications of that day – all of them contributing to the current confusion and consequent impasse.

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Will Nasheed pull it off again in the run-off?

If there is anything unanticipated about the presidential polls in Maldives, it is the date of the run-off, second round. The Election Commission (EC) has declared that the second-round polling will be held on Saturday, 28 September, and not a week ahead as forecast earlier.

Otherwise, the Maldivian voter has given the expected verdict in the first round of polling on Saturday, 7 September. Despite hard-nosed campaigning by the four contenders, the voter has declared – for a second time in five years – that none in the race could win over their confidence and secure a mandate in the first round.

Given the contemporary nature of the nation’s politics, this time’s front-runner – and former president – Mohammed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has little elbow room to look for willing coalition partners for the second round in order to make up for the five-percent vote-gap that denied him a win in the first round. If the trend from the past continues, it could then be a coalition of the runners-up against the front-runner, who can at best then campaign in a ‘coalition with the people’ – which did not take the MDP to its electoral goal in the first round.

It has been a loud commentary on the state of politics since the country became a multi-party democracy five years ago. At the time, the MDP was a second-round beneficiary of a hasty coalition that was put in place after the results for the first round were out. Today, the very same party and the very same candidate who came to power on a coalition platform are contesting alone, and campaigning for a non-coalition set-up for the nation.

As per the EC declaration, Nasheed cornered a high 45.45 percent vote-share instead the 50 percent-plus-one vote required for a first-round victory. He was followed by former minister Abdulla Yameen, with 25.35 per cent, Gasim Ibrahim (24.07 percent), and incumbent President Mohammed Waheed Hassan (5.13 percent). Yameen belongs to the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), while Gasim is the founder of the Jumhooree Party (JP). President Waheed contested as an independent as his Gaumee Ittihad Party could not register the revised minimum 10,000-membership – unilaterally fixed by Parliament – after the MDP and PPM joined hands.

If electoral participation is the hallmark of any democracy, Maldives has it in abundance. The first-round voting figure this time was 88.48 percent of the total 240,000-strong electorate. It compares more enviable than the high 85.38 percent and the even higher 86.58 percent vote-share in the first and second round, respectively, in the first-ever multi-party presidential polls of 2008.

With a 15 percent increase in the electorate over the past five years, the voter-turnout this time is also a better reflection on the revived interest of the first-time voters in the democratic process than was anticipated during the run-up to the polls. However, with a second-round now on the cards, the competing parties would have to keep the voter-enthusiasm at an equally high, if not higher levels, in the second-round.

Gasim’s decision on the second-round alliance could also decide if he or his party would move to the court on their post-poll allegation of more voters than the registered number at some ballot-boxes. Elections Commission President Fuwad Thowfeek, who announced the first round results five hours after the scheduled time in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday (September 8), denied the JP’s claim but has promised to look into specific complaints.

The judiciary’s position also ensured ‘inclusive elections’ that the international community in particular had sought, considering that no one in Maldives had contested the MDP’s position as the largest political party with the highest membership – and Nasheed as the most popular leader/candidate in the country. It is another matter that the judiciary at all levels had conducted themselves with the kind of dignity that political critics would not grant it – after the MDP-dominated Government Overseas Committee in Parliament had tried to haul up three subordinate judges trying Nasheed’s case.

A ‘few more thousand’ votes?

In his first reaction to the first-round results, Nasheed reportedly said that the party would launch its second-round campaign to get “a few more thousand votes” that he did not get to make for an outright victory. To be precise, with 95,244 votes in his kitty, Nasheed would have required 10,751 more votes to make it to the presidency in the first round.

Against this, PPM’s Yameen, a half-brother of party founder and Nasheed’s presidential predecessor Gayoom, declared that they would get 60 percent and more in the second-round. Clearly, he was referring to a non-MDP coalition, which would still have only added up to the higher, yet residual, 54.55 percent after deducting Nasheed’s take-home in the first-round.

Both claims read good on paper, but the ground realities are not as simple as that. The MDP leadership, cadre, and candidate needs to be congratulated for taking their vote-share from Nasheed’s 24.91 percent first-round figure in 2008 to 45.45 percent, an unprecedented 80 percent increase over past five years. Yet, with the party straining every nerve by the hour over the past one-and-half years, without leaving anything to chance, adding every new vote and every new voter (to the turnout) in the second-round is going to be more difficult than is acknowledged.

For Yameen, coalition-formation itself is the starting-point for problems or benefits – and in that order. PPM chief Gayoom lost no time in meeting party managers to discuss and finalise the second-round strategy even as the results from the first round were trickling in. Long before the first-round polls, he had pledged his support to Gasim, his own runner-up now, should the latter end up being the number two after Nasheed.

A reluctant Gasim returned the assurance much later. With his party contesting the vote-count for the second-place, it remains to be seen how Gasim – with possibly the highest number of ‘transferrable votes’ – would react. He could be expected to insist on a done-deal with the PPM (probably) not only for government-formation but also for the subsequent local council polls (December) and more importantly for the parliamentary elections, due in May 2014. It was in the absence of a fully-operational deal that he and his running-mate Hassan Saeed found themselves out of the Nasheed government even before the ink on their purported pacts had dried the last time round.

With Gasim’s JP heading a coalition itself, Yameen and PPM would also have to talk to the Adhaalath Party and Hassan Saeed’s Dhivehi Quamee Party, as well as President Waheed and his running-mate Ahmed Thasmeen Ali. It can be protracted and painstaking, which in the glare of media lights, the Maldivian voter may not be happy about – given the character of an emerging coalition of the kind, after the past five years of instability and destabilisation.

In Gasim’s company was also Gayoom’s brother-in-law Ilyas Ibrahim, a former cabinet minister with his share of voters in certain islands. Ilyas had backed ‘PPM rebel’ Umar Naseer for the party’s presidential nomination. The two walked out of the PPM to back Gasim, and he cannot be seen as deserting the duo for Yameen without having second thoughts or commitments.

Should the second-round contest go on in a predicted way, then a lot would depend on the voter-turnout and the possibilities of many of them shifting loyalties from the first-round commitment. An exhausting first-round turnout also means that there is more room left for maneuverability. An additional percentage point or two could make the difference to the results in a way. A deduction in that figure could make any second-round prediction even more complex and complicated.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Towards a free and peaceful poll

Ahead of the first round of presidential polls on 7 September, the Election Commission (EC) of Maldives recently came out with do’s and don’ts for the nation’s police force. It provides for the police personnel not to come closer than 100ft of the polling boxes and at the same time be available for intervention to ensure free and fair polls, but only at the instance of the head of the polling station.

In turn, the nation’s top cop, Police Commissioner Abdulla Riyaz, has referred to the setting up of an all-party coordination committee at a high-level, to ensure that no untoward incidents happened before, during and after the polls. He has also underlined the fact that ensuring free, fair and peaceful polls is not the exclusive duty of the police force alone, and implied that political parties and the citizenry had a shared responsibility.

What both the EC and the police chief may have missed out is the possible need for all-party coordination committees of the kind at the island and atoll-levels. More importantly, there is a greater need for coordination between the police and the EC officials at all levels, if misunderstanding or mis-reporting of any kind is to be avoided, particularly during the crucial poll hours, leading to contradictory instructions flowing down the line.

Maybe, the two institutions together tasked with an onerous task should set up common control rooms in the national capital and all atoll headquarters, if not possible at the island-level. The latter would owe to lack of manpower and other resources. Yet, one can safely assume that the Maldivian Police Service (MPS) would be operating its control rooms at the atoll-level to full capacity, and could consider housing poll panel representatives, under the roof, with special communication links to the EC at Male and their subordinates and counterparts in the islands.

Such coordination may help fast-track sharing of verifiable intelligence inputs that are available to the police as a matter of routine but not always to the EC. Likewise, poll-related complaints, particularly through those crucial hours, would be preferred more to the Election Commission than the police. Clear understanding, if not outright guidelines, may have to be there if the EC officials, particularly at lower-levels, are not to misread a development and/or misinterpret their own authority in handling law and order situation outside of their immediate purview, particularly on the date or dates of polling – depending on the fact if the presidential polls would run into the second round.

Hyper-sensitive

In a nation where the bifurcation of ‘usage’ between the police and the armed forces has not really happened despite the bifurcation of the unified National Security Service (NSS) nine years ago, on 1 September 2004. If anything, the bifurcation of the NSS into the Maldives Police ‘Service’ and the Maldivian National Defence ‘Force’ (MNDF) was among the early reforms in governance that the pro-democracy movement in the country could be proud of.

The police reforms came about after the custodial death of Hassan Evan Naseem, on 19 September 2003, when the uniformed services were sought to quell a ‘prison rebellion’ and massive public protests in Male’ a day later. Incidentally, Evan Naseem did not boast of any democratic credentials or reformist zeal – having been jailed for a drug-offence – but given the ‘reformist mood’ in the younger generation, that was enough to set off the demand and stoke expectations.

For a population of 300,000-plus Maldives may have enough numbers in uniform. Given the widespread islands, these numbers are also thinly dispersed. This has made policing difficult across the country, particularly in the national capital of Male’, which accounts for a third of the population. It has often been left to the good sense of the people and responsible behaviour of social groups earlier – and political parties since the advent of multi-party democracy in 2008 – to maintain peace and order in the society. The average Maldivian’s expectations from their political leaders are only as strong as their expectations of non-partisan conduct by the police and the security forces, the latter when commanded to policing duties.

Yet, arson and rioting accompanying the ‘anti-coup’ protests by the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of outgoing President Mohammed Nasheed caught the security forces unawares – more so in the urban centres. There have also been off-again, on-again complaints of bias and partisanship in police and MNDF officials, often owing to the unchanged system. The existing system, inherited from a past that the nation’s polity otherwise claims wanting to forget, has involved the near-automatic change of leadership of these two security agencies with every change of government – or at least with every change of loyalty-perceptions of every government.

At the end of the 7-8 February events in 2012, the police and the armed forces were to take more than a fair share of the blame, if it were so. On the one hand, they were alleged to have been part of a ‘political coup’ that led to President Nasheed’s replacement by Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik. That men in uniform were part of the last leg of the ‘December 23 Movement’ protests, demanding President Nasheed’s exit, has not been contested or contradicted. Those affected have not forgotten it, nor do they seem to have forgiven it.

From the other side, only explanations and justification for individual behaviour may have been offered. If the protesting policemen ‘capturing’ television station, was a sign and symbol of an attempted coup, it was there – again uncontested, thus far. There was, however, no charge of senior officials being part of the alleged ‘coup’, and heading the rest of the uniformed protesters from the frontline. It is this that often qualifies for differentiation between a ‘coup’ and ‘rebellion’. The international Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI) that probed the episode(s) has recommended action, but nothing has been forthcoming.

This may have made the security forces hyper-sensitive in one way ahead of the upcoming elections. There seems to be a general feeling that it is better to err on the right side of caution – rather than with a wrong sense of negligence bordering on callousness. Or, so would it seem. The thin dividing line may be crossed, if and only if the situation so warranted between now and the elections – whether confined to a single round or more. If palpable tension rules, as happened through the ‘December 23 Movement’ protest up to the 7 February events of 2012, it could also take its toll on the morale and the psyche of the men in uniform.

Under the scanner

In this era of ‘social media’, some of them promoted by interested political parties, they are always under the scanner, or are made to feel that way.  A feeling that “you are damned if you do it, and you are damned if you do not do it” has become all pervasive. Unfortunately, the political parties during the past year and more have not done enough to restore the morale of their men in uniform. The reverse may have been the case, instead, with free and often unfair views being expressed across the table or through the social media network, for which no one can be held physically accountable.

For all this however, Police Commissioner Riyaz  is in the eye of a controversy after he admitted tweeting a lette, received by him, asking to vote against the MDP’s Nasheed. In a belated reaction, President Waheed said that Riyaz’s tweet was done in his personal capacity. The local media has already pointed out that the Constitution specifically prohibits serving police officers taking political positions even in their personal capacity. The Police Integrity Commission, one of the many ‘Independent Institutions’ introduced under the 2008 Constitution has since announced its intention to probe.

MDP leaders had not spared individual police officers, including Commissioner Riyaz, for their alleged role in the ‘coup’. Riyaz even filed a defamation case against  Nasheed. Even as Nasheed, as a prospective presidential candidate, was circumspect in later days, other party leaders had become harsh on police personnel. Nasheed himself recently said that he had accepted the verdict of the Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI) that went into the 7-8 February developments only because it had proposed ‘police reforms’. In more recent times, he asked party men to be ‘nice’ to the police.

Incidentally, the EC too has not been free of accusations, but  in its case by the PPM and the JP. Both parties have taken exception to the EC utilising the services of IT professionals from India. The EC to has reiterated that the Indians were not involved in election-related work. Chief Election Commissioner Fuwad Thowfeek has also said in public that ‘hackers’ from outside the country had attacked the EC’s database, but to no avail.

Local media reports named the US and Russia as among the countries from where hacking attempts had been made. Such ‘scientific-rigging’, whoever were behind it, could prove to be the nemesis of democracy – not just in Maldives. It is not unlikely that in the foreseeable future the country can develop the IT capacities required to nullify such attempts. It may even oversee experts to track such attacks and alert the officials in good time, lest the credibility of electoral democracy in Maldives be compromised, without anyone having to raise a hand against another.

Integrating the MNDF

Maldives may hold the unique and admirable record of its security forces not opening fire on any protesters for decades now. The last recorded incident occurred as far back as 1974, when again the NSS fired in the air to disperse a mob of protesters during President Ibrahim Nasir’s time in office. To date, the law says that the security forces personnel, including those of the MNDF, cannot carry weapons. Policemen can carry a baton, which in the modern era comes in the collapsible form.

So strict has been the law, and so imbibed has been the respect for it, that the MNDF cannot open the armory without the written permission of the president, who is also the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. It is on record that President Nasheed refused to authorise the use of weapons at the height of the 7 February protests, leading to his replacement.  The claim, made in public (and before the CoNI report), which went into the 7-8 February events, was never ever contested.

Though the subsequent riots and arson may have reached the proportions that they did owing to the security forces not resorting to firing, it remains to be seen how the situation would be handled in the context of the presidential polls. The police – and the MNDF in particular – can still be expected to derive their authority only from the president. But given the public distaste for the use of weapons, should it happen, it could discourage any president in the foreseeable future from authorising the opening of the armory.

It does not stop there. While individuals may have been politicised at all levels, both the police and the MNDF derive their men and women from a traditionally peace-loving society. The two forces have been trained and equipped for maintaining law and order in a peaceful society. Even the slow pace of road traffic – 20 km/hour as the upper-limit – has meant that the relatively high number of traffic police present on Male streets, for instance, are there largely to watch things do not fall apart rather than to enforce rules and regulations.

The police interact with the people constantly, and men have been trained to accept its role as such – at times interceding on their behalf with the political and professional leadership, just as they are expected to do in the reverse. Though the MNDF may not have been psyched into fighting wars with external enemies when none exists, their officers and men have been trained in and/or by professional counterparts from elsewhere. There may lie a distinction, and a potential problem, which may have surfaced time and again in the past – with ‘promises’ for the future.

Not expected to evolve strategies on a daily basis, where alone exchanges need to take place with the civilian administration at all levels, their training has taught them to obey orders. The armed forces not obeying legitimate orders has its consequences for any nation. In the case of Maldives, it would seem that the political leadership at any given point in time seems to be comfortable with ordering in the MNDF rather than calling in the police for handling what essentially are policing jobs.

It may have thus become imperative, for evolving operational code, for the induction of armed forces for policing duties – bringing them under the civilian authority, though not command. As is known, the MNDF comes under the Defence Ministry while the police are attached to the Home Ministry. The induction of the MNDF for policing duties should be the last resort. But with a thinly spread police force at its command, the political leadership cannot resist the urge/need for commending the MNDF to policing duties. Integrating the MNDF into the civilian structure when called upon to policing duties may be a way out.

In recent weeks, the government has created the ‘Special Constabulary’ without anyone giving it the due. The new force could be manned by a combination of experienced and newly-recruited men, who may be fitted in as a para-military force of the kind existing in many other countries. They could be tasked with assisting the police force when called upon to do so, in the maintenance of peace and order. It may not be in the immediate future, but developing the Special Constabulary this way, and attaching it also to the Home Ministry, could contribute to minimising the need and demand for calling in the MNDF for what are essentially policing duties.

Of gifts and gangs

A day after the parliamentary polls of 2009, a news website in the country published a picture reportedly of a voter having captured his crossed ballot on his mobile phone camera, before casting it in the box. The accompanying news report claimed that the picture was ‘proof’ against which the voter could claim MVR100 for his vote from the candidate/party concerned. While the EC may not be able to stop payment of money and costly gifts for votes, it could still attempt to minimise such an unabashed exploitation of technology to this end.

Through a simple order, it could stop voters from bringing their mobile phones into the polling booths, even while allowing its own officials and political party representatives to refrain from using theirs in the vicinity of the poll-box. The police on duty could be called upon to enforce the ban, for instance. There, of course, would be other ways of short-changing the spirit of free and fair polls. Innovative methods would call for innovative solutions.

Having put ‘freedom’ on the top of their list of priorities, the drafters of the 2008 ‘democratic’ constitution had consciously refrained from restricting political movements, rallies and protests. The ‘December 23 Movement’ protests may have set off a process. However, in light of the opposition MDP’s rallies – that refused to die down even weeks afterward – the government of President Waheed got parliament to amend the law – and rightly so – setting prior permission from the police as a prerequisite for political assemblies/gatherings of this kind.

The Supreme Court has since upheld the new law, which was tantamount to ‘reasonable restrictions’ to the ‘freedoms’ that any democratic constitution guarantees citizens. Together, the new law and its attestation by the apex court may have helped, if nothing else, in the police having advance notice of what to expect, when and where. However, there have been whispering protests that local (municipal) councils were delaying, if not outright withholding, permission for opposition parties to hold election rallies in their limited jurisdiction.

It does not stop there, though. It is now an acknowledged fact of Maldivian social and political life that politicians often deploy ‘hired gangs’ for spreading tension and creating violence. Independent studies have claimed that political leaders and/or parties have deployed ‘paid gangs’ to disrupt rival rallies, and also to disturb public life and peace through clashes, riots and arson.

In the light of such claims – and subsequent expectation – the police may consider the wisdom of taking known ‘gang members’ attached to independent political parties under preventive detention for the period of the elections. If the present constitution and the law do not provide for such ‘preventive detention’ without presenting them before the courts, so should it be. After all, the police force cannot be seen as violating the letter and spirit of the law – the latter however also ensuring them with the greater task of ensuring and enforcing public peace and tranquility.

Under the circumstances, however, if an appropriate case could be made out in individual cases, courts may not after all shy away from discharging their duties, in the larger interest of the nation. It is here that the perceived non-partisanship of authorities concerned would come under strain, and question.

In a way, Elections-2013 may be an occasion for the nation’s uniformed services to redeem/reiterate their commitment to the national cause, fair-play and non-partisanship, when various stake-holders are holding other institutions responsible for degradation, if not outright decay. That such fair-play should be confined to discharging their duties under the constitution is what it is all about.

Poll observers and political parties

It is sad and unfortunate that political parties like the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and the Jumhooree Party (JP) have called the impartiality of the nation’s Election Commission into question. In a politically-divided society, their current charge that the EC had employed IT professionals from India could be applied to their own men and women, if similarly engaged – or, those from other nations, near or afar, and by one political party or the other. Having led the creation of one too many ‘Independent Institutions’ under the 2008 constitution, all political parties have derided and downgraded them, as and when it suited them. The MDP is no exception.

It is also in this context that the role of international observers of the election scene assumes greater significance and relevance. On the ground, the international observers, comprising independent persons, organisations and journalists on the ground have a greater responsibility than they may have visualised and acknowledged. In a charged political atmosphere, where biased sections of the social media have been left to play havoc with opinion-making, the international observers would have to be doubly conscious of the possibilities of interested parties misleading them, by the hour, if not minute, on the polling day. They also need to know that Male’ is not Maldives, and that many, if not most, of them may not have accessed the islands where two-thirds of the nation’s electorate reside.

Accessing information from those islands, without having visited many of them even once, and without having independent and reliable sources in any of them, comes with a cost. Caution is the key-word that they may have to follow in discharging their task – for the international community and larger Maldivian society may rely upon them.

As many as 60 civil society organisations in the country have since joined hands and called for free and fair elections. Some of them also plan to send small or large teams of observers across the country, as observers, and hope to collate the inputs to provide a comprehensive and holistic picture. Given that the atolls and islands are far and widespread, and accessing them too is not an easy task on a single day, the EC may consider working with non-journalist teams of international observers, so that by their dividing the work they could provide a comprehensive and non-partisan report on the polls.

Yet, for all the caution and precaution, it needs to be accepted that political parties and their leaders may after all act with greater responsibility than critics of the system may credit them with. At the end of the day, the first round of polling for the presidential election may be followed by  second– and the presidential election followed in turn by the nationwide island and atoll council elections in December before the all-important parliamentary polls in May 2014.If nothing else, the ‘big brother’ in the voter, silent as he may otherwise be, will be watching their conduct before, during and after each round of all the polls in this long list – and deciding upon the suitability of political parties and individual candidates.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Making the Maldives’ post-poll transition smooth

In a nation where rumours rule the roost ahead of the 7 September presidential polls, President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, seeking re-election, may have set the right tone for post-poll transition. President Waheed has said that he would not leave the country, if defeated. The same approach could be expected from the other three candidates, and the running mates of all four.

Over the past year and more, the international community is concerned only about political stability in the Indian Ocean archipelago. India, the closet neighbour with a regional and global presence to match, has clarified more than once that it is all for an ‘inclusive’ election that is free and fair without violence, followed by a ‘smooth transition’ that belies avoidable speculation of all kind. The rest of the international community seems to concur.

Under the Constitution, the first-round polling is scheduled for 7 September, followed by a second, run-off round involving the top two within 21 days should no candidate manage to cross the half-way mark. For an atolls-nation with thinly spread-out population spread across 950-km north-south, and not used to multi-party and multi-layered elections, Maldivians voted in large numbers in 2008 after the new Constitution came into being.

In 2008, the first round witnessed high 85-plus percent polling. It was followed by an even higher 86-plus percentage vote in the run-off. The figures were lower at 80 percent for the parliamentary polls six months later. It slipped further to 75 percent in the local council polls a year later. With the result, the voter-turnout has become an object of study. It could show the disenchantment or otherwise of the first-time voters, who were still in their early teens in 2008.

Voter turnout this time would also be a measure of the attitude of the rest, particularly the first-time voters from 2008 and those a generation before them. The events of the past five years, particularly since the controversial power-transfer and subsequent nation-wide violence of 7-8 February 2012, are an object lesson for the Maldivian polity to learn from. The population, insulated from the rest of the world until the tools of information technology, like television and mobile phones, made it all possible, would also have to understand and appreciate the ways and waywardness of coalition leadership, which they had consciously mandated in 2008.

Job cut out

Post-poll, a new president has his job cut out. He will have to put together a cabinet, which has to be cleared by an existing parliament close to the end of its term. As under other presidential systems like in the US, the government is answerable to parliament, but elected members do not become ministers. It comes with hopes and possibilities, problems and burden. The existing system commands that parliamentary clearance for the cabinet can cut either way, going by past experience.

In 2008, after the nation elected Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) candidate Mohamed Nasheed as President, parliament approved his first set of 13 cabinet ministers without question. In 2010, alleging that the new parliament, elected year earlier, with an opposition majority, was adopting a ‘scorched earth policy’ viz the executive powers of the government’s 13 cabinet members, barring then Vice-President Mohamed Waheed’s submission of their resignation to President Nasheed, as if to force a political showdown between the two arms of the government.

After the Supreme Court ruled that the resignations stood, President Nasheed re-appointed the old set of Ministers. This time, parliament refused to clear them all, necessitating the nomination of fresh faces in the place of the rejected ones, but with informal consultations between the president and parliament. The trend of parliament rejecting the President’s nominees for cabinet positions has continued under President Waheed. Here again, there were no rejections at inception. It has since become a routine after the coalition partners supporting President Waheed in parliament and participating in his government through ministerial nominations decided to contest the presidential polls on their own. All this has set bad precedents as far as political stability goes, until a future dispensation proves otherwise.

On assuming office, a new President will have to present the annual budget in November, and get it passed by parliament in time for the government to start its New Year spending from 1 January. In between, the nation would be called upon to vote in the local council polls in December, followed by parliamentary elections in May 2014. The new President can think of doing something about implementing the manifesto of his party in full measure only after that. The premise does not rule out the possibility of the President not enjoying a majority in the existing parliament or the new one coming up after the polls.

A tough task even under relatively favourable circumstances, but a new President will be assuming office in a not-so-favourable political environment. In political terms, parliament would not have had enough time to switch from the ‘election mode’ to take up more serious work. The past five years in general and the months after 7 February power-transfer have ensured that parliamentary committees in particular have acted in a politically partisan manner, even though they may still be well within the letter of the law.

The past years in general and one-and-a-half years in particular have witnessed a spate of ‘defections’ from one party to another, at times within the ruling coalition. It is very difficult for a keen observer of Maldivian politics, even from within the country, to say which MP is now with which party – and if anyone intends crossing over (one more time?) in the near future. The months after the presidential polls could witness another spate of defections, possibly to the elected leader’s side. There could be exceptions, but of defections, there could be many. Such a course could contribute further to the existing sense of instability.

The Maldivian economy is in bad shape now (as has often been in the past years and decades). The reasons are many, though the inability of successive governments to make the successful resort tourism to share an equitable size of the revenues as the share that it makes of the nation’s economy has not paid off. Recently, the government has obtained promises of a $29.5-million credit from the Bank of Ceylon, for ‘budgetary support’.

In what is possibly an unprecedented move, MDP nominee for the 7 September polls, former President Nasheed called on Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram to discuss post-poll fiscal support that his country might request from India. Nasheed was in Delhi, followed later by another presidential candidate, Abdulla Yameen of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), and called on the Indian leadership starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India has also invited Gasim Ibrahim, presidential nominee of the Jumhoree Party, to New Delhi for a pre-poll exchange of views. The Delhi discussions, according to reports, have centred on political stability, free and fair elections and smooth transition.

Lame-duck presidency or what?

Traditionally, Maldivian Presidents from the days prior to multi-party elections have been sworn in on 11 November. The current constitution has continued with the existing norm of an incumbent President completing five years in office before the elected/re-elected one is sworn in. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled the country as quasi-elected Head of State and government for 30 years ending 2008, with elections every five years. Before him, President Ibrahim Nasir had done so for 10 years, after he was elevated from the post of Prime Minister.

The earlier experience thus had an inherent safety-clause as for continuity. Transition, if at all, affected only individual ministers that the President nominated to his cabinet, post-poll. Such changes were made even between two elections. There was no question of parliamentary clearance for cabinet ministers, some of whom had also been elected to the People’s Majlis. So were many government officials at all levels.

The question of transition thus really came into play only after the 2008 multi-party polls. The euphoria of multi-party polls took care of some of it. The proximity of the second-round poll date in late October and the swearing-in on 11 November took care of most of it. Despite avoidable speculation and motivated rumours to the contrary, outgoing President Gayoom, who lost the polls, and the incoming successor in MDP’s Nasheed were determined to make a ‘smooth transition’. They did the transition work smoothly.

There is nothing to suggest that the post-poll transition this time would be anything but smooth. The question will not arise if Maldivians chose to re-elect the incumbent. That is a different matter. Otherwise, the relatively long gap between the polls and the inauguration could make the incumbent a ‘lame-duck’. This could be more so if adversarial tendencies identified with the entire political and poll process in the country over the past five years and more come to play even more vigorously after the elections.

‘Revolving door’

In the US, from where the executive presidency model for Maldives and the phrase ‘lame-duck’ may have been borrowed, the interregnum is used for ensuring smooth transition. With nearly 4000 political positions in government falling vacant, such a time-gap has helped an incoming President and his team to discuss and decide on successors for each one of them. It also gives the newly-appointed ones enough time to acclimatise themselves to the new jobs. It has been quite beneficial, particularly for academics using the ‘revolving door’ between the government and universities, to make the personal transition smooth.

Whenever the incumbent is re-elected, American Presidents have often used the interregnum to set the agenda for the bow-out term, based on their election manifesto and the party’s expectations four years hence.Should the incumbent not contest re-election or be defeated, only then does he become ‘lame-duck’ for the remaining period of his term, until the inauguration of his successor.

In their first terms, Presidents in the US are often seen to favour personal loyalists, old townsfolk, university friends, erstwhile professional colleagues and fund-raisers’ nominees for advisory roles – if they do not fit in for any cabinet berth. They use the interregnum after re-election to give a new shape to their administration, based on their higher levels of confidence, experience and exposure.

In case of re-election President Waheed could be expected to use the interregnum to work out sustainable policies and program, and also choose his team to deliver on them in his second term. His successor, whoever else is elected, could be expected to do so at his level. It is the interactions between the two teams during the interregnum of lame-duck presidency would matter the most. The US, over the past decades and centuries, has evolved a scheme of the incumbent and the elected naming their ‘succession teams’ to ensure a smooth transition. Maldives could set a precedent for itself this time round.

Creating precedent(s)

It is for the first time the Maldives would be coping with an interregnum of this kind. Experience is non-existent, expectations are high, and apprehensions even more. President Waheed’s elevation at the head of a post-poll coalition, yet without fresh elections, was a hurried affair. There was no interregnum, so to speak, though some of the coalition partners took their time choosing their nominees for his cabinet.

President Waheed’s quick-fire succession, if it could be called so, may have also set a precedent that was not relevant to Maldives under the earlier schemes. Democracy comes with its compelling baggage, and has a way of finding satisfactory solutions to the problems that dissatisfaction – and, not disaffection – throws up from time to time. New situations may thus demand new look at the existing scheme, and throw up new solutions. A new-generation leadership should be prepared to accept it and acknowledge it.

The past five years should have taught Maldives and Maldivians that multi-party democracy is a ‘dynamic process’ and that the nation would have to be prepared for surprises at every turn of its democratic career from now on. In the early days of such initiation, the dynamic surprises may have proved to be dynamite-shocks to some, the larger community included. In a unique situation thus, President Waheed, whether re-elected or not, would be facing interregnum of two kinds – one, between the presidential poll and the inauguration, and the second between now and the parliamentary polls.

It is unclear how the existing parliament would be disposed towards a new President, if the incumbent is not re-elected, until the parliamentary polls in May next. Only then would have some clarity appeared on the political equations between the two institutions under the constitution. It is another matter if the new President would have a parliament of his liking, or if he would be able to work on a broad-based consensus, where a broad-based coalition is not possible.

Over the past one-and-half year, the MDP ‘opposition’ in parliament – otherwise the ‘majority party’ in terms of numbers in the 77-member house – has tried in vain to have President Waheed voted out. It could not muster the two-thirds majority, and did not press the resolutions after a point, on two occasions. The post-poll situation under the constitution has not provided a solution if such attempts were to be made in and by parliament against a ‘lame-duck’ President. Nor does it say, if his Vice-President would still (have to) succeed him, if he were to resign alone or be voted out during the interregnum.

Likewise, the constitution-makers did not think of contingencies like the one in which the outgoing President resigns with his entire cabinet, including the Vice-President, after the election of his successor, but before the traditional day for the swearing-in. The constitution now provides for the Speaker of the Majlis to take over as President for two months, with the sole purpose of conducting fresh elections to the presidency. The constitution is also silent on the Speaker’s role, if any, where the incumbent resigns, and so does his Vice-President, after a successor has been elected and an election, notified!

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Maldives preparing for presidential polls

Come September the Maldives will be having the second multi-party elections for the nation’s presidency.

Only recently, incumbent President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik said the 2008 Constitution has provided for a presidential form of government under a parliamentary scheme, and the nation is facing the consequences. Waheed did not say if it included the controversial circumstances revolving around his own ascendancy to power when he was Vice-President to Mohamed Nasheed, the first President elected under the multi-party scheme.

President Waheed and his government and coalition partners have had their way that the polls for the nation’s highest office would not be advanced as sought by Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). Yet, issues surrounding President Nasheed’s resignation of 7 February 2012 refuse to die down. The MDP itself may be paying a price for that in electoral terms, exactly 19 months after the ‘power-transfer’.

Candidate Nasheed is the issue thus in the upcoming elections. His three opponents readily concede as much. They also concede that the MDP is the single-largest vote-getter among them. The Election Commission has for months now acknowledged that MDP is the single largest political party in the country with the highest number of registered members.

The second in the line, the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), comes a distant second with less than half the MDP’s figures. Third is the Dhivehi Raayathunge Party (DRP). Both parties were founded by President Nasheed’s predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and together, their membership comes closer to the MDP membership.

Of memberships and votes

Yet, questions remain if the DRP will be able to translate its membership into votes, or if there will be a substantial migration towards the PPM camp. Should that happen, and should Waheed’s administration attract a substantial share from an anticipated high percentage of non-committed voters, as candidate Nasheed had calculated in 2008, the team may be in some reckoning.

DRP leader Thasmeen Ali gets to be the running-mate of President Waheed. Thasmeen may hold that record for a time, as he was similarly the running-mate of incumbent President Gayoom the last time round.

Apart from Nasheed and President Waheed, the poll involves PPM’s Abdulla Yameen, half-brother of former President Gayoom. Also in the race is Jumhoree Party (JP) leader, Gasim Ibrahim, with his vice-presidential running-mate, Dr Hassan Saeed. It is pertinent to recall that in the first multi-party presidential polls of 2008, contesting alone, Gasim Ibrahim and Hassan Saeed polled a total of 34 percent vote-share, second only to incumbent President Gayoom’s 40 percent.

Yet, under a system in which the first two contest the second run-off round if none poll over 50 percent votes in the first round, Nasheed with his stand-alone 25 percent first-round vote-share challenged Gayoom in the run-off in 2008.

Gasim and Saeed joined hands with him. Nasheed won. The final poll figures stood testimony to the effective transfer of their first round votes (Saeed: 16-plus percent, Gasmim: 15-plus percent) to Nasheed.

The question is if Saeed with his Dhivehi Quamee Party (DQP) have enough votes in the first place left with him, and also has enough ‘transferrable votes’, which JP’s Gasim alone seems to be enjoying in the country at the moment.

That leaves Yameen with his running-mate Dr Mohammed Jameel Ahmed, who was Home Minister in the Waheed government, sacked after crossing over from Saeed’s DQP. Saeed himself would later leave the government as Special Advisor to President Waheed, to join hands with Gasim, whose JP technically is still a partner in the non-MDP, anti-Nasheed administration, along with the PPM.

Having launched his campaign late, and amidst controversy attending on the PPM primary for selecting the party nominee for the presidential polls, Yameen relies on the better organisational structure of the party, the recognisable face and leadership of Gayoom.

In doing so, he however will have to face charges of ‘family rule’ within the party, which thankfully none of his political rivals are ready to flag in any specific and substantive way.

Realignment for run-off?

The issue is Nasheed, and his post-resignation polarising call, seeking to revive the past political fight for ushering in multi-party democracy in the country. It remains to be seen if excessive reference to, and reliance on the same as a campaign platform and tool over the past months since his leaving power can still help focus the limelight on the futuristic issues and constituency-based campaign manifestos that the MDP and Nasheed have painstakingly prepared and pointedly present to the voter.

For Nasheed to win the first round, he will require those additional votes, from new constituencies, or constituencies that were impressed by his socio-economic measures during the short-lived first term, and would hence like to give him a second chance.

Should the elections run into the second round, it could then become a wide-open race. If nothing else, the temptation is to constantly refer to the 2008 experience, in terms of form and content. There could be realignment, the contours of which remain to be explored and exploited in full.

The MDP has called upon the 240,000 voters of the country to hand down a decisive first-round victory in the first round to Nasheed, for the party and the leader to give a stable government and carry forward democratic and socio-economic reforms that they claim have been initiated during his ‘aborted’ first term.

It is also an acknowledgement of the ground reality, where the MDP cannot find coalition partners among the rest to work with the Nasheed leadership. His running-mate in former Education Minister and first Chancellor of the National University, Dr Mustafa Luthfy, along with the recent entry of Parliament Speaker Abdulla Shahid to the MDP fold after being elected MP under a DRP ticket, is expected to bring votes that Nasheed may need for a first-round win.

President Waheed has created history too. With the total membership of his Gaumee Iththihad Party (GIP) under the scanner, and the present law on 10,000 members for party registration under judicial review, he chose to contest as an ‘Independent’, though his DRP partner is a registered party.

He went around acquiring the signatures of 1500 registered voters for endorsing his nomination, an alternative requirement under the law. Tension remained in the Waheed camp until Election Commission officials had cleared all signatories as genuine voters, sitting through the night on the verification work.

Waheed’s poll call would be ‘stability in an unmanageable coalition set-up’, which it was. Today, every government party is contesting the presidential polls separately and against one another – apart from contesting against the MDP, the only party that is not a coalition partner. They have voted for and against government motions in Parliament, and run down one another, too. Only recently did they join hands to vote against ‘secret ballot’ on non-trust votes against the President, Vice-President and Government Ministers in the house.

Yet, some of them, particularly the PPM and DRP, have voted with the MDP opposition, to deny ministerial jobs to some nominees of President Waheed’s choice.

Yameen seems to resting on past laurels, many of which readily sit on the shoulders of President Gayoom. The PPM calls his rule the ‘golden age’, and positions Yameen’s candidacy as a return to that era.

Yameen, as may be recalled, is representing a party and leadership that converted a poor, ignorant and ignored nation to one with the highest per capita GDP in South Asia, through 30 years of rule that also gave Maldivians modern education and limited medical care, non-existent earlier.

‘Limited’ or ‘non-existent’ democracy as known to the West was the bane of generations and centuries. Gayoom’s presidency was satisfied with incremental changes to the scheme, when the younger generations in particular may have already been craving for wholesale changes.

If he was a lone fighter the last time round, JP’s Gasim has put together a ‘rainbow coalition’ this time. Apart from Hassan Saeed’s DQP, he has also successfully negotiated a partnership with the religion-centric Adhaalath Party (AP). As may be recalled, the vociferous and conservative leadership of the AP played a major role in mobilising the ‘December 23 movement’ that ultimately brought about their intended change of power without ballot in February 2012.

Missing reciprocity

With its conservative religious approach in a moderate Islamic nation, the AP is otherwise seen as a controversial political player. Their crossing over from the Waheed camp too close to the nominations date for the presidential polls caused eyebrows to rise.

Yet, by bringing together disparate groups that are otherwise desperate, Gasim may have ensured a political combination that could see him through to the local government elections in December this year, and parliamentary polls that are due by May next year.

For now, PPM’s Yameen has publicly declared his intention to work with Gasim in the second round polls (hoping that it would go in for a run-off). This may have also owed to the over-worked rumour-mill that put the PPM and MDP on the same side of the political divide should there be no clear verdict in the first round.

Gasim himself has not reciprocated positively, nor even responded to Yameen’s indicative support in anyway. Maybe he is keeping his options open. Maybe he has coalition compulsions that could flow on into the second round – if there is a second round.

The factors are varied, and so are the projected strengths and perceived weaknesses of the four tickets. There is then the question of 30,000 first-time voters, who unlike their preceding generation in 2008, seem unsure of themselves after the ‘democratic developments’ of the past year. Though they may not have begun focusing on it exclusively, at some point in the coming weeks contesting camps may have to do more to attract additional voters to the booth than may otherwise turn out to be.

In 2008 most, if not all first-time voters, and most of the total 40-plus per cent ‘young electors’ were believed to have voted for change. There was also an urge and consequent surge for participating in the historic event of their generation, from all sides. Thus the presidential election in 2008 witnessed a high 85-plus percent turnout in the first round and a higher 86-plus percent polling in the second round.

This time, too, voter turnout will have a say in the final outcome, starting with the fact if the polls would go into the second round – and more so, on who will get to rule Maldives for the next five years – and hopefully so!

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: ‘Human-trafficking’ to the fore again, but hopes remain

The US State Department’s continued placing of the Maldives on the ‘Tier Two Watch-List for Human-Trafficking’ could not have come at a worse – or better – time for the country’s authorities, particularly those intent on finding a way out for good.

Coming as it does after specific issues flagged by India over the past months, the US warning that Maldives could automatically slip into the ‘Tier Three’ [watchlist] with consequential sanctions of a non-humanitarian kind should be seen as a wake-up call for Male’ to set right matters, which have been allowed to drift for decades now.

At the bottom of the Maldivian plight should be the surge in development and growth inconsistent with the expectations and consequent preparations of the nation – particularly in the tourism sector – over the past three or four decades.

While successive governments have continued with the original policy of allowing foreign investors in big-time resort tourism to expatriate their earnings in dollars, this has also made wages less attractive for locals, with their relative perception of higher educational qualifications, to take up those jobs that are otherwise on offer.

This has led to an anomaly. While local youth can do with more and better-paying jobs, to match the very high cost of living in the country, the employer class on all fronts are dependent on immigrant labour to meet their needs. Thus, for a nation of 350,000, Maldives has an additional expatriate labour population totalling a conservative 100,000.

The US State Department estimate puts the figure upwards of 150,000. It is also the only major ‘labour recipient’ nation in South Asia, with most of them coming from Bangladesh and India, in that order but roughly in 5:3 ratio or thereabouts, followed by Sri Lanka – which used to be the dominant player, including the skills and white-collar sectors, earlier.

Better emigrant laws, regulations and enforcement in countries such as Sri Lanka and the Philippines, from where again immigrant labour have been working in Maldives, have made the country less attractive for the work-force from those destinations.

Learning from elsewhere

Maldives can learn from the US and the rest of the west, which as ‘labour-receiving nations’ not only have strict laws and enforcement, but have also become stricter with issuance of visas for immigrant employees – most of them of the white-collar, technocrat variety.

The US still however receives a large number of unskilled and semi-skilled labour from across the border with Mexico. Both the more regulated white-collar immigration and at times illegal immigration of Mexican labour have become hot election issue in the country, entailing government intervention.

Even in the Gulf-Arab region, for which south and South-East Asian nations have been providing the labour class in large numbers from the seventies, if not earlier, constant governmental pressure from overseas (alone) seems to have done the trick. There, the trend is getting reversed lately, with the locals too competing with the immigrants for the fewer available jobs.

Some of the Gulf nations have already begun following the west, in restricting employment opportunities for immigrants to facilitate better job opportunities for the locals.

Not just the Maldives as a nation, but Maldivians society as a whole can benefit from the authorities approaching the immigrant labour issue with an open mind, and raising the standard of labour protection to international levels.

At present, the (hospitality) industry (construction) infrastructure and household sectors are major employers of immigrant labour. Other than the high-end segments of the hospitality industry, others in these sectors do not address issues of labour concern – including minimum and sustainable wages, job-protection, legal remedies in case of employer wrong-doing, including with-holding of employee-passport and criminal intimidation, threats and at times attacks.

Ignorant and vulnerable

All these have made the immigrant labour class vulnerable in more ways than one.

With-holding of passports and non-extension of work-permits by the employer automatically renders the employee ‘illegal immigrant’, culpable to punitive punishment under the local laws. Seldom has there been a case of the authorities acting against the culprit-employer – or, working with host-governments to break the ‘job-racketeer network’, which often exploit the illiteracy and/or ignorance of the migrant labour class in particular.

Some of the insensitivity, if it can be called so, may also owe to the large-scale employment of immigrant labour in the household sector, where long hours of work for relatively low wages may have blinded the officialdom and the political class to the impossibility of the existing situation. The politico-administrative insensitivity to addressing the issues on hand may have been a product of the process.

This is seldom acknowledged, even less acted upon. The trend may have to change, with the political class taking the lead. Thus, the government should initiate legislative and legal measures to ensure fixed timings, minimum wages and other benefits and security for the migrant labour also in the household sector. The message would then spread.

If however, linkages are made between better labour/employee conditions and enforcement, the Maldivian Government would be in a position to attract its youthful population to productive sectors of the nation’s economy, thus churning out a possible process of social re-engineering.

In the absence of such pro-active measures, society has been complaining against itself that their youth power has been exhausting itself on unproductive goals and an ‘unfinished’ work culture.

The Maldivian Government has programmes against drug-abuse and rehabilitation addressing its youth, which otherwise constitutes over 40 per cent of the population. The dependence on the migrant labour could also become less, if only over a period.

A fourth major sector employing emigrant workers is the maldivian government, which has been recruiting teachers, doctors and nurses from countries such as India, which may also be the single largest supplier of white-collar workers of the high-skilled variety in the country.

As instances have been reported in the past, even government authorities have been in the habit of retaining the passports of Indians and other foreigners, at times recruited through shady job-agents.

This by itself may ensure the safety and security of the passports for the immigrant worker, as long as it is voluntary. But the unwarranted and avoidable delays in returning the passport when an employee had to rush back home for an emergency has caused issues both to the affected people and the host governments, which come under continual pressure from their constituencies in very many ways.

In the Maldivian context, it also means that an overseas employer returning home on an emergency call might have to spend an indefinite number of days at Male, spending heavily on an otherwise purposeless stay, to collect the passport. It is unfortunate that the recent Indian decision on registration for Indian visas for Maldivians has caused a similar problem for people from the interior islands with no relation or friend to put up with while in Male, which anyway is a crowded place for them to take such conventional courtesies for granted, any more.

In the famous ‘Menaka Gandhi case’ in 1979, otherwise, the Indian Supreme Court, for instance, had held that the passport of an Indian citizen was the property of the Government of India. It also implied that confiscation/retention of the same without proper legal authority and authorisation (even by Indian Government authorities) could tantamount to an act against the Indian sovereign, entailing the government of India to initiate appropriate measures – if some affected citizen were to approach the courts in India for redress.

Today, much is being said about the Government of India regulating the visa procedure for Maldivian nationals who visit India for medical care and education, their number being upwards of 50,000 each year.

Suggestions have also linked the matter to the controversial ‘GMR issue’. Maldivians wanting to travel to India on work or medical care in particular may have suffered, but there have not been any reported case of the visas for ’emergency patients’ and their attendants either being denied or even delayed, since.

If anything, the Indian authorities in Male’ are said to have prioritised such cases for fast-tracking visa issuance, though there is this avoidable tension for the next of kin who want to travel to India with their relation for emergency medical care.

Over the years, there have also been other cases of Maldivian employers, including the government, holding back passports, denying Indian immigrant employees to visit their dying kin, or lit the pyre of a dead parent, which also has great religious and spiritual significance for most Indians in particular.

What is not often known in Maldives – including the local media, which is otherwise sensitive to the perceived plight of Maldivians, likewise — is that many of these cases make waves in the high-literacy Kerala State in particular, where the media is as well networked as families.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Lately, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The government of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik has started addressing some of the international concerns, including those of India’s.

The immigration authorities have notified that it is illegal for employers to hold back the passports of foreign labour – and the Indian High Commission, maybe among others, in Male has given adequate publicity for the same. Between them, the Maldivian Immigration and the IHC have also put in place a system for prior clearance for the High Commission for employer-recruiters sourcing emigrant labour from India.

Indian immigrant labour in Maldives has also been advised to route their work-permit, passport, etc, through the High Commission’s consular authorities – entailing additional workload for its staff. If found successful, it is not unlikely that the Indian government may (have to) consider extending the process to other embassies, especially in such countries with similar problems.

For foreign employees of the Maldivian government, a decision is said to be on the anvil for the passport-holders to retain their original document.

For others, particularly the lower-end labour class, a via media would still have to be found as they may still not be able to have a safe place to secure their passports and work-permits other than the custody of their employers, some of whom tend to abuse the trust and faith in more ways than one.

Indians may be among the most visible of beneficiaries in this case, their homes not being not far away from the Maldivian coasts could save on time, cost and avoidable agony by not having to camp in high-cost Male’ for a couple of days to collect their passport, after the authorities in the islands and their respective departments had cleared their leave applications.

Otherwise, a government proposal before Maldivian Parliament to clear extradition treaty would help in facilitating prisoner-swap between the two countries, for nationals of one country convicted in the other could undergo their prison-terms, if any, in their native land. Given the limited healthcare facility in Maldives, Indian prisoners would benefit from such a course. It could still be open if Maldivian prisoners in India could choose to spent their terms in Indian jails, or otherwise.

Distracted by democratisation?

It is possible that the turn of political events centred on the advent of multi-party democracy over the past several years may have distracted Maldives, and diffused its attention from equally pressing issues like those flagged by the US Report and highlighted by the specified Indian concern. Yet, the world does not wait for Maldives to set its political house in order – as a succession of US/UN reports on human trafficking and human rights have shown over the past years.

It is sad that a succession of political leadership in the country over the past years had not found the time — and more so the inclination — to address the larger issues cited in the annual reports of the US State Department – which for right reasons and wrong, have come to be acknowledged as bench-mark of an international kind, whether or not one likes it or not.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Decision on US base may have to wait

Notwithstanding the recent media leaks on a ‘US military base’ in Maldives, a decision on whatever that facility be, may have to wait until after the parliamentary polls of May 2014, not stopping with the presidential elections due in September this year.

In effect, this could mean that a national debate, and more importantly a parliamentary vote, will be required before any government in Male – this one or the next – takes a decision, though none is now in the air even a month after a section of the local web media went to town on the ‘leak’ and subsequent reports in the matter.

For starters, it may be too premature, if not outright improper, to dub the emerging relations as ending in a military base for the US in the Indian Ocean Archipelago.

The two governments have stuck to the position that the ‘Status of Forces Agreement’ (SOFA), with the US claiming it to be a general agreement for extending training facilities by the American armed forces. According to the US, similar agreements already exist with over 100 countries.

Maldives Defence Minister, Col Ahmed Nazim (retd), too has said that they were not contemplating any military facility for the US but only for the latter extending training to his nation’s personnel.

He has since gone to town, declaring that the leaked document was ‘not genuine’ and that they had shared the original one with the President’s Office, the Attorney-General’s office and the Maldivian customs – and would do so only with the Security Services Committee, not Parliament’s Government Oversights Committee, where the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) incidentally is in a majority.

Bringing parliament into the picture

For now, the lid has been placed on the issue after Attorney-General Aishath Bisham clarified that handing over any region in the Maldives for the setting up of a foreign military facility of whatever kind would require parliamentary clearance with a simple majority.

In doing so, the Attorney-General cited the advice given to the incumbent government of President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, by her predecessor Aishath Azima. According to her, Azima had advised the Defence Ministry as early as March 21 that parliamentary approval would be required for any agreement of the kind with the US. Bisham said she stood by her predecessor’s position in the matter. The media leaks appeared a month later.

As may be recalled, the law providing for prior parliamentary clearance for agreements of the nature came into being when Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) leader Mohamed Nasheed was President in 2010. That was when the Nasheed government was keen on signing a construction-cum-concession contract for the Male international airport with India-based infrastructure developer, GMR Group.

The deed was done, but not without high drama and controversy both inside and outside parliament.

Between the executive and the legislature in a democracy, both sides blamed each other for ‘colourable exercise’ of respective powers in the ‘GMR deal’ but none questioned the subsequent application of the new law to new agreements of the kind.

The US-SOFA deal cannot be exempted either, unless parliament were to do so. However, given the present political calculus and electoral calculations, no political party or leader may have the will to move forward in the matter, inside parliament or otherwise,.

As may also be recalled, after much drama and bilateral tensions, the succeeding government of President Waheed cancelled the GMR contract. The decision has since been upheld by the mutually agreed-upon arbitration court in Singapore, which is also looking into the compensation claims of GMR. The Maldivian government argues that the contract was ab initio void, and has cited the existence of the law requiring previous clearance for transferring possession of a ‘national asset’ to foreign parties, as among the reasons.

The law came about at a critical juncture at the birth of the GMR contract. A day after the Nasheed government announced the formal decision in the matter the opposition-majority parliament hurriedly passed the law, pending the unanticipated reconstitution of the board of the Male Airport Company Ltd (MACL), after the existing one was unwilling to sign on the dotted line.

President Nasheed returned the bill to parliament promptly, under the existing provision. Left with no option but to assent the bill after parliament had passed it a second time, with equal hurry and vehemence.

As is the wont in many other countries, the Constitution provides for any bill passed by parliament a second time becoming law automatically, if within a stipulated period the President does not give his assent. In the Maldives it is a 15-day window. However, the MDP government got the GMR contract through before the lapse of the 15-day period, and President Nasheed too gave his assent to the said bill within the stipulated time, if only to avoid arguments about the untenable nature of his continuance in office under controversial circumstances of the kind.

From ACSA to SOFA…

Apart from SOFA, the US has signed another 10-year agreement, titled the ‘Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement’ (ACSA), which it claimed had been done similarly with over 100 countries. The ACSA, signed ‘on a bilateral basis with allies or coalition partners that allow US forces to exchange most common types of support, including food, fuel, transportation, ammunition, and equipment.

The agreement does not, in any way, commit a country to any military action. Some would argue that SOFA is an extension of ACSA, but some others also point out that not all countries that have signed ACSA are targeted by the US for signing SOFA.

In the case of Maldives, in 2009, when MDP’s Nasheed was the Maldivian President, his Defence Minister of the day, Ameen Faisal was said to have discussed an ACSA with visiting US Ambassador Patricia A Butenis.

According to Wikileaks, sourced to US Embassy message of October 7, 2009, “He also reiterated the Maldives’ interest in establishing a USN (US Navy) facility in the southernmost atoll. He thanked the Ambassador for US security assistance…”

In the present case, Maldivian media reports, claiming access to unauthenticated draft of SOFA, said that the agreement outlined “conditions for the potential establishment of a US military base in the country”. The draft, obtained by Maldivian current affairs blog DhivehiSitee, “incorporates the principal provisions and necessary authorisations for the temporary presence and activities of the US forces in the Republic of Maldives and, in the specific situations indicated herein, the presence and activities of the US contractors in the Republic of Maldives”, the Minivan News web-journal said in the last week of April.

Under the proposed 10-year agreement outlined in the leaked draft, Maldives would “furnish, without charge” to the US unspecified “Agreed Facilities and Areas”, and “such other facilities and areas in the territory and territorial seas? and authorize the US forces to exercise all rights that are necessary for their use, operation, defence or control, including the right to undertake new construction works and make alterations and improvements”.

The draft also says that the US would be authorised to “control entry” to areas provided for its “exclusive use”, and would be permitted to operate its own telecommunications system and use the radio spectrum “free of cost”.

Furthermore, the US would also be granted access to and use of “aerial ports, sea ports and agreed facilities for transit, support and related activities, bunkering of ships, refuelling of aircraft, maintenance of vessels, aircraft, vehicles and equipment, accommodation of personnel, communications, ship visits, training, exercises, humanitarian activities”.

The contents of the leaked draft has remained uncontested – maybe because it is an American template that has been leaked – and provides for US personnel to wear uniforms while performing official duties “and to carry arms while on duty if authorised to do so by their orders”. US personnel (and civilian staff) would furthermore “be accorded the privileges, exemptions and immunities equivalent to those accorded to the administrative and technical staff of a diplomatic mission under the Vienna Convention”, and be subject to the criminal jurisdiction of the US – and not the Maldivian laws, with a preponderance of Islamic Sharia practices.

The draft exempts US vessels from entry fee in ports and airports, and personnel from payment of duties even for their personnel effects brought into Maldives.

The draft also stipulates that neither party could approach “any national or international court, tribunal or similar body, or to a third party for settlement, unless otherwise mutually agreed” over matters of bilateral dispute flowing from the agreement. This would obviously cover “damage to, loss of, or destruction of its property or injury or death to personnel of either party’s armed forces or their civilian personnel arising out the performance of their official duties in connection with activities under this agreement”.

Sri Lankan precedent on ACSA

In recent years, ACSA became news in neighbouring Sri Lanka at the height of ‘Eelam War IV’, when the government of President Mahinda Rajapaklsa signed one with the US in seeming hurry. President Rajapaksa was away in China when his brother and Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa signed the ACSA at Colombo in March 2007, with Robert Blake, who was the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives at the time.

It is believed that the US intelligence-sharing, helping Sri Lanka to vanquish the dreaded LTTE terror-group, particularly the ‘Sea Tigers’ wing, followed the ACSA.

At present, questions are being asked within Sri Lanka if the current US ‘over-drive’ over ‘war crimes and accountability issues’ relating to Colombo at UNHRC may have anything to do with Washington’s possible desire to sign up for SOFA or such other agreements.

However, there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that such may have even be the case. It is however to be presumed that the US may not be exactly happy over Sri Lanka getting increasingly involved in China’s sphere of influence, what with President Rajapaksa visiting Beijing almost every other year, and signing bilateral agreements in a wide-range of sectors, as he has done less than a fortnight back.

A section of the Sri Lankan media in the immediate neighbourhood has since claimed that MDP’s Nasheed would take up the issue with Colombo and New Delhi. Otherwise, President Rajapaksa’s ruling front partner, Minister Wimal Weerawansa, head of the National Freedom Front (NFF), a shriller breakaway faction of the one-time Left militant, now ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ Janatha Vimukthi Peramana (JVP), is alone in his condemnation of the US move in Maldives. The Sri Lankan Government and polity otherwise have refrained from any reaction – so have their counterparts in India.

Politics of silence?

If partners in the Maldivian government and also the opposition MDP seem to be maintaining relative but calculated indifference to the leaked document, it may not be without reason. The Wikileaks’ indication of the predecessor Nasheed government’s willingness to sign ACSA with the US and then Minister Faisal’s interest in the ‘US setting up a military facility in the southernmost atoll’ may have silenced the party to some extent.

The Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), which in its earlier, undivided avatar as the Dhivehi Progressive Party (DRP), put Maldivian sovereignty and national security as among the major causes for its opposition to the Male airport contract with the GMR.

Post-leak, media reports have quoted second-line MDP leaders in the matter. The party’s international spokesperson, Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, said that the MDP had heard of the proposal – supposedly concerning Laamu Atoll and the site of the former British airbase on Seenu Gan in the south of the country.

“We are wondering what our other international partners – India, Australia, etc – think of this idea,” Ghafoor said.

Other party leaders too have reacted cautiously, linking their undeclared future decision in the matter to the views of the Indian neighbour and regional power, whose security interests too are involved.

It is not only the opposition in the Maldives that has maintained silence over the proposed agreement with the US.

Ruling front partners who prop up the Waheed government inside the Cabinet and more so in Parliament have also avoided direct reference to the US proposal, at least in public. The president is not known to have commented on the subject, as yet. When the SOFA leak appeared in April, President’s Office Spokesperson Masood Imad said that he had texted President Waheed, who had no knowledge of any agreement.

The Defence Ministry also had no information on the matter, he said. At the time, Imad would not comment on whether the government would be open to such a proposal.

Subsequently, Defence Minister Nazim clarified that no decision had been taken in the matter. There thus seemed to be an attempt to show up the SOFA initiative, if there was any on the Maldivian side, as that of the Defence Ministry.

It is not a new process in the Maldivian context, as in most other nations, specific initiatives of such kinds are often moved only through the departments or ministries concerned, and the rest of the government is involved, at times in stages.

The Nasheed government’s certain initiatives in similar matters too had followed this route, in relations to China, it is said. In this background, Defence Minister Nazim’s delayed clarification that the Government had shared the official document with the relevant authorities and that the “leaked agreement was altered and shared on the social media” should set some of the concerns on this score to rest – at least for the present.

However, as the SOFA leak says, “The proposed agreement would supersede an earlier agreement between the US and Maldives regarding “Military and Department of Defense Civilian Personnel”, effected on December 31, 2004.

PPM’s founder, who had also founded the DRP, was Maldivian President in 2004. Hence possibly the reluctance of the PPM to keep the ‘US issue alive’, over which the Gayoom leadership had taken on the Nasheed government, on the ‘Guantanamo prisoner’ issue, for instance.

The issue involved the transfer of a Chinese prisoner of the US from the infamous Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, to Maldives, but domestic opposition flowing from the nation’s Islamic identity (however moderate) stalled the process.

After Diego Garcia…

A SOFA agreement for the US with Maldives acquires greater significance in the current context of the nation having to possibly the vacate the better-known yet even more controversial Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Archipelago, less than 750 km from southern Maldives’ Addu Atoll with the Gan air-base.

The 50-year lease agreement for Diego Garcia, which the British partner of the US in the NATO purchased from Mauritius in 1965 for three-million pound-sterling a year earlier, ends in 2016.

The controversy over the forcible eviction of the local population to facilitate the lease has not died down in the UK, and there are strong doubts about the likelihood of its extension, owing to a British High Court verdict, which restored residency rights to the original Chagos inhabitants as far back as 2000.

Though a subsequent 2008 House of Lords ruling has over-turned the court verdict, the Chagos have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where embarrassment might await both the UK and the US. Whether or not the Chagos can return to their home, a 2010 British decision to declare the Archipelago as the world’s largest marine reserve and protected area could well mean that no military activity could occur thereabouts.

The controversies have not rested there, and continue to rage in court-room battles, and could become a cause for the civil society in the UK and rest of Europe. It is in this context, any SOFA agreement would trigger an interest and/or concerns in neighbouring Sri Lanka and India – not necessarily in that order – as also other international users of the abutting Indian Ocean sea-lines, which Diego Garcia and Maldives, not to leave out Sri Lanka’s southern Hambantota port, built in turn by China.

Neighbourhood concerns

Thus, US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake’s assertion after the SOFA draft leaked to the Maldivian media that Washington did “not have any plans to have a military presence in Maldives” has not convinced many.

“We have exercise programs very frequently (with Maldives) and we anticipate that those would continue. But we do not anticipate any permanent military presence. Absolutely no bases of any kind,” Blake said.

However, considering the content of the leaked SOFA draft, and/or the motive behind the leak and its timing, there are apprehensions that before long the US might demand – and possibly obtain – Maldivian real estate for its military purposes, one way or the other, and will also have protection from local court interference.

In this, the interest and concerns of Sri Lanka and India are real. Ever since the US took a keener interest in the ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability’ issues haunting the Sri Lankan state, political establishment and the armed forces almost as a whole, Colombo has been askance about the ‘real motives’ behind Washington’s drive at the UNHRC, Geneva, for two years in a row.

The European allies of the US too are reported to have been perplexed by the American move, which they seem to feel should stop with the attainment of political rights for the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka, and not chase a mirage, which could have unwelcome and unpredictable consequences, all-round.

For India, after the Chinese ‘commercial and developmental presence’ at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and Mattale airport, any extra-territorial power’s military presence in the neighbourhood should make it uncomfortable. It would have to be so even it was the US, with which New Delhi signed a defence cooperation agreement in 2005.

Before Washington now, Beijing was said to have eyed real estate in Maldives, and was believed to have submitted grandeur plans to develop a whole atoll into a large-scale resort facility for an anticipated tens of thousands of Chinese tourists.

Around the time, China reportedly submitted its plans, news reports had suggested that Chinese tourists, who had propped up the Maldivian economy at the height of the global economic meltdown of 2008, felt unwelcome in the existing resorts, where they would like to cook their own packed meal brought from home – cutting into the hoteliers’ profit-margin in a big way.

While China now accounts for the highest number of tourists arriving in Maldives, it does not translate into the highest-spending by tourists from any country or region. This owes to the spending styles of the Chinese and other South Asians, including Indians, compared to their European and American counterparts.

India as ‘net provider of security’

Media reports have also quoted US officials that they would take Indian into confidence before proceeding in the matter. If they have done so already, it does not seem to have been in ways and at levels requiring an Indian reaction in public.

Alternatively, the US may not have as yet found the levels of negotiations/agreement with Maldives that may require it to take the Indian partner into such confidence. This could imply that the US is still on a ‘fishing expedition’ on the Maldivian SOFA. It is another matter that at no stage in its recent engagements with India’s South Asian neighbours, Washington seemed to have taken New Delhi into confidence at the comforting levels that the latter had been used to with the erstwhile Soviet Union during the ‘Cold War’ era.

Whatever the truth and level of such ‘confidence’ on the American side, an existing bilateral agreement provides for Maldives tasking India into confidence over ay third-nation security and defence cooperation agreements that it may enter into.

As may be recalled, India rushed its military forces to Maldives in double-quick time under ‘Operation Cactus’ in 1988, after Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries targeted the country, and then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom sought New Delhi’s military intervention.

Bilateral security relations have been strengthened since, with the Coast Guards of the two countries exercising every two years together, with Sri Lanka being included in ‘Dhosti 11’ for the first time in March 2012.

However, considering the purported American vehemence on the Sri Lanka front, and Washington making successive forays into India’s immediate neighbouring nations, one after the other, questions are beginning to be asked in New Delhi’s strategic circles if they had seen it all, or was there more to follow. As is now beginning to be acknowledged, in countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal, where the Indian concerns had neutralised Chinese presence to some extent, the US is being seen as a new player on its own.

In the bygone ‘Cold War’ era, the erstwhile Soviet Union was not known to have made forays – political or otherwise -into South Asia without expressly discussing it with India, and deciding on it together.

Afghanistan might have been an exception. The country at the time was not seen as a part of South Asia, yet the embarrassment for India was palpable. But Maldives and the rest in the present-day context of purported American military interest seeks to side-step, if not belittle India.

Otherwise, if the choice for India is between the US and China, for an extra-territorial power in the immediate neighbourhood, it would be a clear one. But if that choice were to lead to an ‘arms race’ between extra-territorial powers that India and the rest of the region cannot match for a long time to come, it would be a different case altogether.

It could also lead to greater estrangement of India and some of its neighbours, who would find relative comfort in China, compared to the US, whatever the reason. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent assertion that India was in a position to be a ‘net provider of security’ in the South Asian region needs to be contextualised thus.

In this context, Maldivian Attorney-General Bisham’s assertion that any agreement of the SOFA kind with the US would have to clear Parliament assumes significance.

However, considering the general American tactic that involves economic carrot and politico-diplomatic stick at the same time, it is not unlikely that the current phase on the SOFA front may have been only a testing of the Maldivian political waters, when the nation is otherwise caught in the run-up to the presidential polls, to be followed by parliamentary elections. By then, it is likely the issues would have also sunk in on the domestic front in Maldives, for the US to take up the issue with a future government in Male.

All this will make sense in the interim if, and only if, the US is keen on proceeding with the Maldivian SOFA.

To the extent that Defence Minister Nazim has said that Maldives was only considering what possibly may be a unilateral US proposal, he may be saying the truth – and his government may not have moved forward on this score.

With most political parties in the country, then in the opposition, flagged ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national pride’ while challenging the GMR contract, inside parliament and outside, it is likely that any precipitate initiative at the time of twin-elections now could trigger the kind of ‘religion-centric reaction’ that cost President Nasheed his office in February 2012.

For now, Islamic Minister Sheikh Shaheem Ali Saeed, representing the religion-centric Adhaalath Party, which spearheaded the anti-Nasheed protests leading to the latter’s exit, has served notice. The party will not allow the Government to sign SOFA with the US, he has said.

Considering that President Waheed has bent heavily on the Adhaalath Party for support and campaign cadres in his election-bid of September this year, it is likely that SOFA discussions with the US may not proceed for now – just as it may not form part of the electoral discourse, either for the presidency this year, or for Parliament next year.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: From confrontation to conciliation and coalition?

With the Maldives warming up for presidential polls slated for September and the Election Commission fixing July 15 as the date for opening nominations, the climate of confrontation from the past year is slowly but surely giving way to the possibilities of new coalitions, pointing to the inevitability of conciliation and/or reconciliation now and later.

If still some political leaders will still not talk about conciliation and nor talk to one another, and instead hold grudges against one another, it has have more to do with personal hurt and/or ego than politics and political philosophies.

Independent of the political implications involved, Parliament Speaker Abdulla Shahid’s decision to join the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), after quitting the Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (DRP), is a case in point. At the height of the ‘power-transfer’ in February last year, the MDP charged him and the Majlis with impropriety in hurrying through the ‘succession processes’ after President Mohammed Nasheed gave way to Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik in a surprising yet not wholly unexpected turn of events. Earlier, too, Speaker Shahid was locked in a series of procedural issues between the Executive under President Nasheed and the Majlis, where as the ‘minority party’ the MDP saw him more as an ‘opposition man’ than as an unbiased Speaker of the House.

A fortnight after Speaker Shahid’s formal announcement, no major party in the ruling coalition has demanded his resignation. Nor has any of them talked about moving a no-trust vote against him. Individual voices have been raised, but they have remained as such.

The DRP to which he had belonged until the other day and of which he was among the leading-lights, has since gone about its national congress as if nothing had happened. The party has enough worries on hand, in terms of its continued stability and future, starting with DRP Leader Thasmeen Ali contesting the presidential polls of September. Going by media reports, the national council has amended the party’s constitution, authorising the executive committee to formulate the internal laws for dissolving the DRP, if and when it so desired.

Army told to stay away

In a fitting and much-needed direction ahead of the polls, Defence Minister Ahamed Nazim has reportedly told the armed forces not to get involved in direct politics. They should stop with exercising their democratic rights as voters, and should not identify with individual political parties, the local media quoted him as telling the personnel of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF). A retired colonel of the armed forces, Nazim was at the centre of the controversy attending on the MDP charges of a ‘politico-military coup’ against President Nasheed in February 2012.

Minister Nazim’s direction now should have a salutary effect on the morale of the Maldivian forces in the future, if it is taken to its logical conclusion. It could help ensure free and fair elections, which the constitution has promised every five years. More importantly, it could set the tone and tenor for the political class and the armed forces reconciling themselves to the division of the security requirements of the State between the MNDF (external security) and the Maldivian Police Service (MPS for internal security duties), when the unified National Security Service (NSS) was bifurcated for the very reason in 2006, during the relatively long run-up to the democratisation process.

The political executive not having kept its part of the deal, the MNDF and the MPS have remained extremely and excessively politicised with their top-rung getting a make-over with every change of government. Given to practices from the past and also the paucity of MPS personnel at the ground-level, successive Governments too commanded the MNDF to what essentially are policing duties, leading to a cycle of ‘mutual dependency syndrome’ and consequent controversies. The fact that the MNDF was involved in the arrest of political personalities by successive Governments even after the bifurcation, in the one-day closure of the Supreme Court, all escalating to levels in which the force and also the MPS got entangled in the ‘power-transfer episode’ of February 7, 2012, speaks volumes.

Coalition realignment

Coalition and conciliation have been the basis for the emergence of multi-party democracy in the country and its sustenance since. Elections-2008 became possible, and results became pronounced, thanks to the opposition coalition of the time, particularly in the second-round, run-off polls to the presidency, despite what otherwise may be parroted in public. The process went unacknowledged as such, but that was what it was. Despite the controversial circumstances for which the 2008 constitution had not provided for, the realignment of that coalition was a major factor in the ‘transfer of power’ in February 2012.

In the run-up to the September polls, there is a talk of further realignment. Every party is talking to every other party, or is possibly sending out feelers. Whatever the reason, senior leaders of parties which were supposed to have been after one another were known to have met over the past year of conflict, controversy and confrontation. Where some such meetings were supposed to have been private, affairs became public knowledge almost immediately, whatever the reason, whoever leaked it.

Thus, Nasheed had DRP leader Thasmeen Ali and PPM’s Abdulla Yameen, since elected as the party’s presidential nominee, calling on him on separate occasions over the past year, like Speaker Shahid would do months later. Their’s was however said to be either a courtesy call on a former President or was to discuss specific issues like deadlocks in Parliament, where the MDP is the single largest party and controls many House Committees. Yet, the ice was broken, post-February ’12.

Protagonists remain. Of the three, Maumoon Gayoom and Mohammed Nasheed were past Presidents. The third one, Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, is the incumbent. Waheed has since called on Maumoon, talking about a possible coalition still for the September poll, against Nasheed and his MDP. President Waheed has also been talking to ruling coalition partner and Jumhooree Party (JP) presidential candidate Gasim Ibrahim and Gayoom’s PPM rebel, Umar Naseer. He already has the religion-centric Adhaalath Party (AP) and Presidential Advisor Hassan Saeed’s Dhivehi Quamee Party (DQP) in alliance with his own Quamee Iththihaad Party (QIP), all backing him for the presidency.

Gasim and Thasmeen Ali, leader of the DRP, founded by Gayoom before he split away and launched the PPM had once projected themselves as partners. There are also reports from time to time that the MDP has been sending out feelers or receiving them to and from partners in the ruling coalition. For them, Gayoom not contesting the primary even while retaining the party presidency and Yameen becoming the PPM’s presidential nominee should blunt some of their misdirected angst from the past, near and far.

The MDP is the single largest party, both in Parliament and outside now, going by the numbers. The recent cross-over by Speaker Shahid and a few others has added to the party’s parliamentary strength. MDP leaders claim that it is a reflection of the public mood ahead of the presidential polls. Candidate Nasheed has declared since that the party would not opt for a coalition as it was unworkable under the Maldivian constitutional scheme, which provided for Executive Presidency.

Party leaders attribute Nasheed’s declaration to the MDP’s confidence in being able to win the presidential polls by itself. Critics remain. They say, there are no takers for a coalition with the MDP after the 2008 experience, and that the MDP was making a virtue of a necessity. Yet, through the past year there have been occasion in which the MDP, and some of the leading partners in the ruling coalition like the PPM and the DRP, voting together on crucial pieces of legislation, reflecting the need and possibilities of ‘bipartisanship’, which is an inherent, yet unpronounced element of the Executive Presidency scheme.

End to ‘negative politics’

It is but natural for any nation that has continued with and under the same political leadership for three long decades, and a history of sorts before it, to suffer the effects of ‘anti-incumbency’ afflicting the regime. The 2008 Constitution and the presidential polls were the cause and effect of the anti-incumbency finding a democratic expression, leading to the most controversial of ‘transfers of power’ that the nation had anticipated or others had gone through. There is no reason why 2013 could not be a repeat of 2008, pushing 2012 to the background and permanently so, at least as far as the process are concerned and independent of the results, which rests with the people of the country.

If Elections-2008 were thus won and lost on ‘negative votes’, it may not be any different in 2013. In most democracies the world over, ‘anti-incumbency’ rather than the ‘promised moon’ has been at the bottom election-driven power-transfers. In some of those nations, palpable in the Third World than in the First, internal dynamics of individual political parties have been driven by their inherent belief in ‘anti-incumbency’ – and not their ‘positive’ politics, policies and programmes – putting them (back) in power.

So complete has been the belief that some leaders in some of the parties would rather fight to keep the party leadership with them, ready to be catapulted to power by the externality of anti-incumbency against the ruler of the day. This throws up the problem of the newly-elected not having thought of working out and working with a ‘positive programme’ to endear him and his party to the people at large, who thus end up crying ‘anti-incumbency’ before long.

Democratic over-heating

It is under these circumstances that post-poll governments in these democracies have often been driven to stick to their electoral promises which are mostly confined to ‘exposing’ those that they had replaced and bringing them to justice for whatever offence that they might have been said to have committed while in power and abusing that power. This ‘eye-for-an-eye’ merry-go-round, if it could be called so, has only made every one blind to the power that they have come to enjoy and enforce, rather by default than any other way.

This alone has had the potential to defeat the people’s faith in democracy, as they get to feel little or no positive contributions and consequences of democracy touching their everyday life. Despite hopes to the contrary at birth, Maldives has proved to be no exception. However, in this case, over the past five years of democratic over-heating Maldives has proved that popular democracy has come to stay. So has coalition politics, in power and/or out of it.

‘Coalition-compulsions’, a new phrase that Maldives and Maldivian polity will have to come to terms with even while practising it already, would imply that all stake-holders should be ready for future cross-over by individual parties and their individual leaders and should not say or do things that they might regret on a later date. In a nation where the total registered membership of all political parties does not add up to half the electorate, it is saying a lot.

It is a message to the political parties that they need conciliation processes and reconciliation procedures in their own larger and future interest than their short-lived present, which the first five years of democracy has proved to each one of them, individually and collectively. If at a critical stage in the nation’s history, Presidents Gayoom and Nasheed could ensure a smooth power-transfer through a promise of give-and-take in 2008, there is no reason why the un-kept promises as perceived by various stake-holders cannot be revisited in the run-up to the second presidential polls under the multi-party democracy scheme.

There is thus a need for finding institutional solutions for ending mutual conflict and consequent confrontation that the nation can ill-afford in times such as these — when political stability is threatened alongside by economic downslide. It can blame the economy on the external world. Political problems are a Maldivian making just as the transition to democracy was a boon earlier. Both have had the ‘Made in Maldives’ brand sealed all over them.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Seeking to put the judiciary in a spot

On specifics they may differ, but a common view seems to be slowly emerging on the imminent need for effecting reforms to the nation’s judiciary among the divided polity in Maldives.

Included in the discourse is also the role of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), whose membership has also come under question, as should have been anticipated at the drafting of the 2008 Constitution.

To the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MD) of former President Mohammed Nasheed, everything that could go wrong with the judiciary and the JSC has gone wrong. The party often identifies its immediate concerns with the ongoing trail against Nasheed in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’ when he was in power in January 2012. A conviction accompanied by a prison term not less than one year could cause his disqualification from contesting the presidential polls, slated for September this year.

Yet, the MDP’s larger concerns over judicial reforms pre-dates the ‘Judge Abdulla’ arrest, which contributed to the pervasive mood when the power-transfer occurred a couple of weeks later. President Nasheed went to the extent of ordering the Supreme Court shut down for a day – a rarity this in any democracy – until he had got the seven-judge bench of his choice when the mandatory two-year term ended for reconstituting the same after the commencement of the new Constitution.

The party did have to make compromises, and compromises are also what democracies are all about. It is not unknown to democracies that judges with political leanings often get elevated to the respective Supreme Courts in particular. In the US, the presidential model of which the Maldives has adopted under the 2008 Constitution, the political branding of Supreme Court Judges are so very complete that analysts would identify them either as ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ in their judicial approach.

Both the ideological background of the judges and their branding are inevitable, too. In a two-party system where most people choose to enroll as members of either of the two majors, namely, the Democrats and Republicans, students grow up to become lawyers, to be elected or elevated as judges. Whether they try to be non-partisan in ideological terms, starting with abortion but extending to state ownership and intervention, heir past accompanies them as an unburdened baggage.

Gayoom legatees, all

In the Maldives, everything government and everyone in government other than President Nasheed could be effortlessly branded as a ‘Gayoom legatee’. Most Nasheed aides, political and otherwise, belong there, too, but their timely cross-over may have helped the larger ‘democratic cause’ when it all unfolded. It is another thing to paint the whole judicial system and individual judges but in bulk with the same brush can cause greater trouble for democracy than can solve any of the existing problems, real and imaginary.

Not that the current scheme did not foresee the possibilities and problems. It has provided a seven-year term for ‘retraining’ of judicial officers at all levels in the country. Neither President Nasheed, nor his present-day successor President Waheed Hassan seem to have taken any serious step in this direction. The slanging-match, which contributes to the discrediting of the nation’s judiciary alone keeps cropping up time and again.

The MDP continues to claim that the three-member trial bench of the suburban Hulhumale’ court is illegal, unconstitutional and biased against President Nasheed, despite the Supreme Court dismissing its plea in the matter. The party has since sought the reconstitution of the seven-judge Supreme Court Bench itself. At an official function, Chief Justice Ahmed Faiz Hussain flatly ruled out any such reconstitution, saying that the present bench would continue as long as democracy existed in Maldives. Where a vacancy arose, it would have to be filled, he said.

President Nasheed reportedly added a new element when he publicly claimed that Chief Justice Hussain has been meeting regularly with President Waheed, and discussing the ‘Judge Abdulla case’ with him. From a public platform, he declared that he had never ever called the Chief Justice(s) of his time for any consultation whatsoever. Neither the judiciary, nor the Government, nor the President’s Office is known to have joined issue with him.

Row over JSC membership

Under the Constitution, Parliament has its nominee on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), in turn entrusted with the appointment of judges and the overseeing of their conduct and acquittal as judges. The Jumhoree Party founder and presidential nominee is a member of the JSC, along with Parliament Speaker Abdulla Shahid, which chose the three-judge bench to try President Nasheed.

The MDP, after challenging the authority of the JSC in the matter, has since questioned the impartiality of the bench, chosen with Gasim as member. The office of the Parliament Speaker has however been kept out of what is essentially a political controversy. The two incidentally had participated in the JSC when it chose the seven-Judge Supreme Court bench, after President Nasheed and his government insisted on the executive having its say in the matter.

Attorney General Azima Shakoor opined that given the sensitivity of the issues involved, Gasim Ibrahim could have kept out the selection of the judges trying President Nasheed. She however clarified that the constitution having provided for parliament to nominate a member to the JSC, it was neither illegal, nor unconstitutional on Gasim’s part to have participated in the selection process.

One too many?

Larger questions remain. For starters, for a country of its size and population, the 2008 Constitution provides for one too many ‘Independent Institutions’ aimed at overseeing the functioning of various arms of the Government. The JSC is only one of them. The idea of having a Parliament’s nominee on the JSC was a creation of the new Constitution. So were so many committees of Parliament, tasked to oversee the functioning of the Government and its arms.

Whether intended or not, some of these committees and some of these Independent Commissions have assumed ‘sky-high powers’. Their disposition has been as much political as they could have been expected to be at birth. On occasions, their positions have changed with the changes in the political scenario and equations. These are inevitable consequences of democracy, particularly when politicians are consciously made part of the process where they are expected to be insulated from the rough and tumble of politics outside.

The problem with the Maldivian scheme, if any, owes to the political perception that underlay the thinking of various stake-holders at the time they comprised the Special Majlis to draft a new Constitution. With President Maumoon Gayoom on the defensive after 30 long years of unbroken rule, the co-sponsors of various constitutional provisions aimed at checking another ‘autocrat’ in power. This included a possible return of President Gayoom through what was being planned to be a ‘multi-party democracy’.

Given the over-arching run-up to the presidential polls, followed by Parliament elections next year, the time may not be just right or ripe for a review of the working of the constitutional scheme, that too with an open mind. Yet, with multi-party democracy taking deep and permanent roots in the country, and the emergence of an anticipated autocracy ruled out mostly, it may already be time for the new government and new parliament to set in motion an open-ended process aimed at addressing some of the present concerns, gained out of the working experience of the five years that have gone by.

Any final judicial verdict in the ‘Judge Abdulla’ case, impacting on President Nasheed’s candidacy one way or the other, has consequences for the nation and the constitutional scheme as a whole. That would just be the beginning of a new beginning – and not necessarily the end of anything gone-by.

Any process of the kind could serve its purpose if the political stake-holders look not at the immediate present alone but at the wholesome future, where they will be remembered not for what they ought to have been, but did not – but for what they actually proved to be.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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