Author: N SathiyaMoorthy

Comment: Road to reconciliation has to be smooth

The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has to be congratulated for the belated decision to return to Parliament and the reported interest in reviving the all-party talks. Already, Parliament has reconvened and the government parties, it can be expected, will process the suggestion for reviving the talks once President Mohammed Waheed returns home from his US trip.

The MDP’s participation in Parliament and promise to rejoin the talks – the latter reportedly indicated to PPM parliamentary group leader Abdulla Yameen by none other than former President Mohammed Nasheed – are clear on specifics. The party wants both Parliament and the political negotiations to address reforms to ‘independent constitutional institutions’ as indicated by the report of the Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI).

The report, as may be recalled, had upheld the constitutional validity of power-transfer effected on President Nasheed’s resignation on February 7 and had recommended on issues of common concern, over which there has been across-the-board unanimity of sorts. There are differences over phraseology and details – as between the need for ‘institutional reforms’, as sought by the MDP and ‘institutional empowerment’ – but no political party in the government has seriously contested the need for a re-look at the independent institutions and their functioning.

In fact, parties are also united on the need for looking at the CoNI recommendations in this regard. It is not impossible to achieve much of this before the deadline possibly set by the presidential polls due this time next year, if political parties put ‘national interest’ and ‘national reconciliation’ ahead of petty political agendas and electoral tactic in the coming weeks and months. After all, the very same players could give themselves a new Constitution some four years back the same way, and there is no reason why they could not do so again.

It is all written into the script of dynamic democracies, all through. Rather, for democracies to retain its characteristics, they have to have dynamic processes of consultations, accommodation and readjustments. By the same token it is not about what has not been achieved at any given point in time but what has been achieved still – despite the inherent contradictions, constituency interests and political compulsions of the stake-holders. It thus implies that the proposed reforms need not be sweeping and all-serving. It can make a start, but with a clear idea as to which road would have to be travelled further, not again and again. This requires a sense of accommodation.

Boycotting courts

It is in this context the recent MDP national council’s decision “not to observe the authority” of the courts sends out a jarring note. It flows from the criminal case against President Nasheed and others, on the charges of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) illegally detaining criminal court judge Mohammed Abdulla on January 16. Citing the party decision, President Nasheed stayed away from the suburban Hulhumale court trying the case on October 1, and proceeded on a campaign tour of the southern atolls.

The court has since directed the police to produce President Nasheed on Sunday. Nasheed’s lawyers also did not appear before the three-judge trial bench. While directing the police to produce President Nasheed, the court has observed that he has not given any reason for not participating in the trial. It is anybody’s guess why the police did not restrain him from leaving Male for the southern atolls with more than adequate pre-publicity and in full glare of the media when he was under ‘island arrest’ ahead of the commencement of the trial.

Translated, the term ‘island arrest’ means that an accused in a criminal case has to stay put in the island where the trial is taking place and appear before the courts whenever required. It may sound an archaic part of legal procedures, suited to the times when inter-island and inter-atoll transport facilities were inadequate, and may be among the provisions requiring a review – either by the judiciary on its own or by the legislature, or both. Such a review could also be considered for such penalties as ‘banishment’, still contained in the Maldivian penal laws.

Yet, near-similar provisions exist elsewhere too, where an accused in criminal cases are directed by courts to leave, or not leave, the jurisdiction of such other courts of police stations and also report to them periodically, pending the conclusion of the trial. The possibility of the accused exerting influence over the witnesses is often cited as the reason for such directives by the court. The alternative to such ‘bail conditions’ is for the accused in criminal cases in these countries – neighbouring India and Sri Lanka included – to return to jail, pending the conclusion of the trial and the pronouncement of the verdict.

In deciding to boycott the courts, the MDP seems to have concluded that they could not expect justice from the existing system. Even as they agitated for ‘institutional reforms’, this was the judiciary they had inherited and they had left behind when President Nasheed was in office. Not that they were happy about, but in the eyes of law, the constitution of the Supreme Court Bench, however controversial and however perceived to be partisan it might have been, had the approval of the government and the President of the day.

Having agitated for further reforms, it may now be up to the MDP as the majority party in Parliament to initiate the process and specifics of such reforms under the executive presidency scheme with the government parties still in a minority in Parliament.

By not submitting to the authority of the nation’s courts, the MDP nominee runs the risk of adding to the litany of criminal cases that the party expects would be heaped on him, if left unchallenged. The place to agitate the position again should be the courts, and Third World democracy, that too in the neighbourhood, is full of instances where political party leaders in particular have played within the walls of the existing scheme for tactical approaches whose legality could be questioned only in a higher court.

At present, President Nasheed in this specific case has already run the risk of adding to the offences listed against him. The party has called the original criminal charges against him in ordering the arrest of Judge Abdulla as ‘politically motivated’. However, absence from the court, attracting ‘contempt of court’ charges stand on a different footing. They are offences in themselves, punishable with a six-month prison term as penalty, complicating his chances of contesting the presidential polls even more. Already, the MDP apprehends – and has not minced words in giving expression to such expression – that the original criminal case, as also two defamation cases filed against him – were aimed at impeding his path to the presidential polls.

Before leaving Male for the southern atolls this time, President Nasheed is reported to have asked all concerned to review their position on the criminal cases against him. He may have a point. At the end of the day, there is a political process involved in the independent handling of the criminal cases being independently handled by the Prosecutor-General’s (PG) office. Those processes, and appeals based on facts, law and their constitutionality, do not apply to contempt of court proceedings. These are often ‘open-and-shut’ cases, as the phrase is understood.

Otherwise, the MDP may have to revisit its national council decision to see if one such as this one on boycotting courts would draw adverse decisions from the Election Commission, another ‘independent institution’ under the Constitution. In such a case, the party would only itself have to blame – for confusing tactic and strategy, ideology and adaptability in a dynamic democracy. While numbers are the MDP’s strength, and so is the conviction of those followers, it should be allowed to operate within the inherent limitations that the party has inherited under the multi-party scheme until it has been able to ‘convert’ the rest, or adapt the constitutional means to reach where it wants the nation to be – or, both.

Midnight killing of MP

These developments came ahead of the midnight killing of PPM Member of Parliament, Dr Afrasheen Ali, a religious scholar, on the staircase of his Male’ home. The incident occurred on the ‘UN International Day of Non-Violence’, commemorating the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, India’s non-violence icon, who fought the British colonial rulers without sword and guns – and won Independence for his deeply-divisive country by promoting unity of purpose and conviction about the cause and the process. Gandhiji punished himself for whatever he perceived as the sins of his followers, and would fast for days until they atoned, and subjected himself readily to the rules, laws and courts of the colonial ruler, without question. His was a battle born out of conviction, and remained one until the very end.

Whatever the motive and whoever the killers, the midnight massacre of a Member of Parliament has come at a difficult time for Maldives, when the nation for readjusting to the post-CoNI ground realities. These realities pertained to an end to the MDP street-protests over the circumstances leading to President Nasheed’s resignation and at the same time leading to a political decision by his party to boycott the nation’s courts, instead. Just a day old, the murder will take the police time to resolve, though it could also revive the national discourse on the need for more reforms in more areas – this one, involving the police and criminal investigations.

Sure enough, Maldives as a nation, and the capital city of Male, accounting for a third of the nation’s 400,000-minus population lives, has begun limping back to normalcy of some sort when the MP’s killing has shocked and rocked the nation as none before in recent times. This had been preceded by the crude killing of a senior advocate by a drug-addict and his girl-friend some months ago, but which was resolved promptly by the police force.

What is also at stake thus is the continuance of a peaceful political atmosphere, law and order situation, at a time when the country can do with more tourists and more tourist resorts to egg on the nation away from the economic perils that it finds itself now – and again! Even more important is for the nation and its population to recreate that sense of security and safety, which Maldivians have prided themselves through years of unprecedented and un-calibrated growth, where social equity and societal tranquility have often been victims elsewhere.

The road ahead

For the post-CoNI reconciliation efforts to be meaningful and purposeful, there is an urgent need to create the right political and social atmosphere. The responsibility for this rests with all stake-holders, but the initiative has to come from the government of the day. The criminal cases against President Nasheed, for instance, belonged to a particular point in the contemporary political history of the nation.

It also owed to the kind of political climate that the present-day government parties contributed in equal measure, if not more, when they were in the Opposition. Today, the shoe is on the other foot, and no great national purpose would be served – instead, it could tantamount to dis-service after a point – if there is no attempt at national reconciliation as much in spirit as in word. To that extent, if either side feels strongly and sincerely about reconciliation, they need to smoothen out the road ahead, and at the same time, smooth out the edges, too.

Before President Nasheed, his predecessor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom had worked on reconciliation in his own way. Maybe late in recognising the realities of the new era as they dawned on him, President Gayoom reconciled himself first, and reconciled with the rest, over what needs to be done, and how it needs to be done. Both he and President Nasheed after him reconciled themselves to the ground realities – based at times on numbers in vibrant democracies – by respectively providing for a smooth transfer of power on the one hand, and absence of legal recrimination for what had been done or not done while in power in the past. Much of it seems to have been undone over a short span, and there is an urgent need for the nation as a whole to walk that path – and together – all over again!

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: Demand to nationalise airport threatens relationship with India

The sudden and inexplicable way in which an ‘investor-row’ involving the Indian infrastructure group, GMR, is getting a new twist in recent days in Maldives, if unchecked, has the potential to rock bilateral relations.

Coming just days after the successful visit of Indian Defence Minister A K Antony to the atoll-nation, the demands for the ‘nationalisation’ of the Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA) in Male has left a bad taste. The larger questions however concern the internal political dynamics of Maldives, whose emerging international economic image could impact on the investment-climate when the nation can ill-afford any reversal in FDI inflows.

It was Antony’s second visit to Maldives in three years as Defence Minister, and the only one from another nation holding the post to have visited Maldives in recent history. It was also the first visit by an Indian Minister after the regime-change in Male in February this year.

Going by the joint statement issued on the occasion, the visit and the discussions reportedly were productive for both sides, indicating a greater level of security cooperation between the two South Asian neighbours. Among others, India has promised a new Defence Ministry building, an additional helicopter for the fledgling air arm of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) and naval personnel to help with the maintenance of the Maldivian fleet.

Minister Antony used the occasion to inaugurate the India-aided military hospital in Male with expert personnel on hand, and also laid the foundation for a police training school.

There is an acknowledged need for greater professionalisation of the Maldivian security forces. It has become necessary in the light of the events of the past years and more, when it became clear that the bifurcation of what once used to be known as the National Security Service (NSS) has not served the purpose. In a fledgling multi-party democracy, the uniformed forces came to be a burden to transition even after electoral changes had effected a quiet political transition three years ago.

The Maldives also wants military hospitals in the atolls, which could then be thrown open for serving the common man in the remote islands. Given the increasing levels of bilateral security cooperation between the two countries, New Delhi will also be posting a Defence Attache at the Indian High Commission in Male. At present, the Indian Defence Attache at Colombo, Sri Lanka, is also in charge of India’s specific security interests in Maldives.

Increasing relevance of sea-lines

The Indian initiatives come in the wake of the bilateral, bi-annual Dhosti-XI Coast Guard exercises that were put in place after the coup bid in 1988, which was aborted after India rushed immediate military help. This year’s edition of the exercises also involved neighbouring Sri Lanka, considering that all three nations face shared threats to peace and tranquillity of their shared Indian Ocean waters. Indications were that extra-territorial nations had shown an interest in these maritime exercises, which were promptly kept out, given the immediacy and relevance of the issues, like ‘Somali piracy’ in the shared neighbourhood.

The realisation in India and Maldives for increased offshore military cooperation flows from the increasing relevance of the Indian Ocean sea-lines to the overall geo-strategic concerns of the global community, starting with ‘energy security’. It has been equally reflected in on-shore policy and decision-making in New Delhi, which used to be reciprocated in more than a full measure in Male over the past decades.

In recent times, however, the non-security centric Indian interests and concerns in Maldives have seen enough ups and downs, threatening to unsettle the process, time and again.

This has often resulted in the Governments and policy-makers of the two countries having to start clearing the mess already generated before they could start off on something new. This has had the potential to put the clock back on bilateral cooperation. The delays often get attributed to India, particularly the institutionalised democratic decision-making processes inherent to the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy. Oftentimes, the reverse may be true. The current criticism and opposition to the INIA project, coming as it does from most partners in the government of President Mohamed Waheed, is only the latest in the series, but it also has the potential to rock the boat more violently than in the past, for a variety of reasons.

One agreement, multiple crises

All this does not mean that the government, polity and people of Maldives may not have reservations about the ‘INIA agreement’, which essentially is a lease deed with elements of large-scale investments for modernisation, thrown in, for the tourism-driven economy to upgrade the Male airport to international standards.

Some of the issues being flagged two years after the signing of the agreement – and after substantial progress has been made on the ground – are factors the like of which are involved in any private sector investment in any country. It would be more so when those investments are of overseas origin.

Maldivian political parties that were opposed to the airport contract, when signed, are in power at present. If nothing else, their constituencies would expect them to review the policy that they had derided when in the opposition.

In the Indian context, the ‘civilian nuclear deal’ with the US, and the on-going opposition protests against the sanctioning of ‘FDI in retail trade’, can be parallels. If any or many of them are to return to power at a future date, the political opposition in the country would be called upon to revisit their positions on such issues. Either they accept the ground realities as they existed at that time, or revise the government policy on issues of the kind. These are different from other charges of corruption, for these ones do not involve any complaints of fiscal wrong-doing or loss to the government, per se.

Unlike in India, on the airport deal in Maldives, policy issues, allegations of procedural violations, possibilities of other wrong-doing and loss to the government have all been aired already. Some of them, like the charge that the previous government had circumvented constitutional mandates and legal provisions in the process, or had not acted with care on the prioritisation of contractual conditions and obligations all relate to the domestic front. What they may have to deal with the foreign investor, India’s GMR in this case, are something flowing from the former, but are also independent of the same.

The current phase of the protests owe to President Waheed Hassan’s letter to all parties participating in his government for their views on the matter, for the government to put the inherited problem in the backburner to the mutual satisfaction of all stake-holders. At the end of the day, the airport deal is huge and unprecedented in procedural and financial terms for the country. There is also a need to evolve national consensus on issues and procedures in particular if a successor government has to uphold the national commitments made by a predecessor.

It should in context involve the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of predecessor Mohamed Nasheed at some stage, if ‘consensus-building’ has to make sense to the domestic constituencies and means commitment for the investor company from overseas, from whichever part of the world they come from. It was in the absence of such a consensus when the Nasheed government cleared the deal that the entire issue has been raked up all over again by a successor-government. ‘Due diligence’ became a possibly casualty to political expediency, all round.

The result is that the same agreement has come to be played out politically for a second time in as many years. Earlier, when the agreement was ready for signing, it brought together the divided opposition parties on the same firing-line against the government. They cited various violations of laws and procedures. The after-thought of a parliamentary legislation, directing prior legislative clearance for ‘transfer of national assets’ to private parties, led to the government of the day crying foul, and all 13 nominated members of the cabinet quitting in haste.

Today, when all those parties are in government together, the revival of the issue has threatened the government. One of the government partners, namely, the Dhivehi Rayaththunge Party (DRP) has argued that the government would not have the kind of monies required to pay back the contractor if the deal was rescinded. A few others have called for the ‘nationalisation’ of the airport while some have described it more clearly and carefully as ‘taking it back’. In the process, attributing motives to the DRP leadership and the questioning of their ‘nationalism’ have begun threatening the stability of the government.

That the inherent differences within the ruling coalition cannot but come out in the open once the common adversary in President Nasheed and his MDP had been neutralised was known even to a casual observer of coalition politics the world over. It is written into any coalition arrangement. In Maldives, it reflects a perception of lessening political challenge posed by the MDP, among the partners in the ruling alliance. Such perceptions and decisions based on such perceptions can come to trouble the alliance, just as a perception of a ‘social alliance’ that the MDP thought it had at its disposal when in power failed the party when and where it mattered.

Not different from tourism FDI

This is not the first time that Maldives is faced with policy issues pertaining to overseas’ investments. FDI has been at the centre of the resorts-driven tourism industry, which in turn continues to be the backbone of Maldivian economy over the past decades. The country is yet to find a substitute or a supplementary to the same. So dependent has the economy been on tourism that every global meltdown and every tsunami-like natural catastrophe has upset the Maldivian apple-cart, thankfully to revive in good time and through innovative approaches.

Yet, when the tourism economy evolved, the policy involved long-term lease of individual islands/islets for the foreign investor to build his resort, market it mostly to foreigners, and also repatriate his profits in dollars, and without going through the Maldivian banking system. There were no tabs or restrictions other than the payment of ‘bed tax’ on a pro rata basis to the Maldivian government. The policy has paid very rich dividends to the economy of Maldives, changed the face of the country and has inspired individual Maldivians to aspire for more.

The evolution and implementation of the nation’s tourism policy owed mainly to the presence of a strong and single leadership at the helm through those formative years of what should be acclaimed as the modern, Maldivian economic success story. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s three-decade long rule also helped reach out modern education and healthcare across the atolls, but through the state system. The Gayoom regime adopted a combination of divergent economic policies that benefited the nation on the fiscal front and the people on the socio-economic front.

Through the Gayoom initiative, an imaginative mix of overboard globalisation in the South Asian region of the times at the level of revenue-generation and the socialistic pattern of distribution of the nation’s income made wonders. Neighbouring Sri Lanka was the closest (in terms of geography) and immediate (chronologically) neighbour to experiment with market capitalism. Yet, close to 35 years down the line, the results of the combination are mixed at best in Sri Lanka. In Maldives, however, it has been an unqualified success.

Under the Maldivian scheme, tourism industry, structured as a policy and product of the norms of market economy generated funds for the government to take the benefits of education and healthcare to the largest yet dispersed sections of a dis-spirited society. The benefits in terms of national growth and individual’s development have all occurred in front of the present-day generation, and they have relished and cherished them, too. It is the model that could be said to have been applied to the airport modernisation lease contract, too, though on details of procedure and benefits, there could be differences, both of concepts and of consequent opinions.

In a limited way at least, the airport development and long-lease of the existing reconstruction and accompanying reimbursement of the investment should thus be seen as an extension of the previous policy that the Nasheed government had inherited and explored for further exploitation for the medium and long-term benefits of the people at large. On a related issue, of course, the Nasheed government may have departed from the set norms and practices that did rise the hackles then as now. Included in the list was the decision to grant resort licenses in ‘inhabited islands’, interfering with local culture and also the Islamic tenets against sale and consumption of liquor.

‘Nationalism’ and ‘nationalism’

It is in this context a closer look needs to be given to the demands for the ‘nationalisation’ of the airport. For starters, INIA continues to be owned by the Maldivian State and Government, the GMR has been given only a long lease of the same. To demand ‘nationalisation’ would thus be a travesty of the truth, and challenges the nation’s inherent and inalienable right – which anyway has not been alienated. In a nation where the State owns all the land, such a construct could also hit at (though not at all in the legal sense) later claims for a return of the property to the State when due. If nothing else, it could create a mood of resignation, not just of reservation if only over decades, which in turn is at the heart of the current protests, instead.

GMR at no point in time is known to have demanded ownership of the airport, to begin with. It is thus clear that the State cannot nationalise what it already owns, and continues to own. Worse still, given the traditional meaning attaching to a terminology like ‘nationalisation’, street-demands for the same in the context of INIA could sent jitters down the spines of all those who have already invested hugely on the resort-islands, benefitting all stake-holders in the process.

Unless otherwise proscribed, what may apply to other lessees of islands should apply to whichever lessee of the airport islands, be – as long as it is for development against the payment of lease money and on prescribed conditions for a fixed period of time. The reverse should also be true the same way – what is sought to be applicable to the single largest investor in the nation’s history could be applied to lesser mortals without anyone being wiser of any unforeseeable situation when an agreement is signed or a situation is created, later.

It is not unlikely that there may still be a need for the Maldivian Government to revisit the lease-policies as a whole and applying the yardstick to the GMR deal too. Whether such changes could be specific to a particular project or agreement, or can have retrospective effect is a question that needs to be agitated in the context of the individuality or otherwise of individual agreements involved. However, responsibility needs to be restored to the national dialogue and clarity evolved through a consensus process, lest any foreign investor – existing one or a future one – would have doubts of his own on entry-exit terms and timelines.

Product of sweat and toil

All this does not preclude the present-day sentiments attaching to what has since been rechristened as INIA in the living generation of middle-aged Maldivians and above, particularly so those in Male. The airport was a product of their sweat and toil, and literally so. As students and youth in their growing-up years, they had contributed physical labour and whatever a poor nation could afford for the up-gradation of the airport in the mid-Seventies. Both sentimentally and politically, it had contributed in some ways to the Independence of the Maldivian protectorate from the British ‘Protector’. The airport is thus of a sentimental value to many grown-up in the country.

All this should not mean that the ‘sovereignty’ of the Maldivian state and the security of its territory should be reduced to be identified with the airport near-exclusively in parlour discussions, if not national discourses. If the argument is that the INIA is a tool for defending the sovereignty of the nation and its territorial integrity, there are other, smaller airports across the country, including those for the dozens of hovercraft dotting the lower skies, which are all vehicles of economic growth, not military-threat. So has been INIA, barring the one occasion, when the Indian Air Force (IAF) was called upon to defend the airport and the nation through it, from marauding mercenaries in 1988.

Yet in the new millennium for those who made the airport possible in the first place, and their younger generation to confuse ‘nationalism’ with ‘sovereignty’, raising arguments based on such perceptions would not help the nation, after a point. The spirit and phraseology are not inter-changeable, nor can they be inter-mingled in legal and commercial terms, either. Arguments thus based on non-existent linkages could make for good politics, but would not contribute to good policy. They have to be separated and addressed as individual aspects – but addressed they should be.

Despite a further expansion and growth of resort-tourism in the country, the limitations for the future are being systematically exposed. The Maldives does not have answers to the ever-increasing demands on the economy, whose expansionist pace is slowly coming to a grinding halt. With no scope for unlimited advent of manufacturing or even the services sector, as a money-spinner and/or forex-earner, the country would have to look at infrastructure as a source for attracting investments and creating the kind of jobs that the average Maldivian youth will be happy with, and paid for, in full measure.

Reviewing investment policy is one thing, but revisiting an individual contract is another. The two shall not meet – and the nation cannot afford it if the matter is allowed to drag on either. The alternative should be to learn from the mistakes, if any, and apply correctives where possible to the issues on hand – and also in revisiting the policy for the future. That alone would help.

Profitability, vulnerability

It is in this context investments from across the world have to be assessed for their overall profitability for the Maldivian people and economy, and the relative vulnerability that such arrangements could throw the nation into. In the current phase of the expansion of the Maldivian economy and growth, small-time investments in international/regional relevance would not suffice, as used to be the case for the funds requiring for putting up a resort or two. Either foreign governments or international agencies will have to put in the money, which will be in the form of repayable credit, even if at a low rate of interest and over the long term.

The alternative, which comes without any political or fiscal tag, over the medium and the long-term, is to encourage FDI, particularly in the infrastructure sector, where the foreign investors’ perceived propensity for political mischief over time would be minimal, as against their investments in the stock market, for instance. There are no repayment-tags attaching to such investments, but for the licensed fees, which however have to be negotiated with care and foresight.

Over time, the experiences of other nations have shown that investor-nations have often used their investments and repayments to muscle their political way in the host-nation, through the short, medium and long-terms. In their case, the repayment terms and schedules hang over the nations’ head like the Damocles’ Sword. Against this, overseas-investor has often been seen as a friend and advocate of the host-nation in his native land, in political, economic and security terms. The lessor-nation does not have to repay him with interest, with profligacy and bad-planning in the interim adding to the fiscal and economic vows of Governments as mightier nations have been over the past years.

In its place, a carefully-negotiated lease agreement provides for his recouping his investment-cost with interest over in a calibrated time-period. What may thus be required at the moment is re-negotiation of the INIA agreement on the one hand, and the need for the Maldivian government and legislature to fix certain loopholes that they might have found in their existing policies and procedures, possibly with the view to evolving a consensus approach, which had eluded the nation on this score in the past. Therein may lie the solution now to the Maldivian airport row, too – not elsewhere or otherwise!

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: Waiting for the CNI report 

The ‘long wait’ seems to be nearly over for Maldivian politicians, the government and friends of the Indian Ocean archipelago. The expanded Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) has since reiterated its decision to come out with the findings on the circumstances leading to the resignation of President Mohammed Nasheed on February 7, by the extended deadline of August-end.

Whatever the finding, its presentation can expected to be followed by high drama, straining the infant democracy all over again, if the stakeholders refuse to the acknowledge their contribution and accept the CNI Report in word and spirit.

For his part, President Nasheed has since led a delegation of his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) to the Indian capital of New Delhi and the Sri Lankan capital. The party seems to be coming round to the view that the two neighbours would matter the most in forming the international opinion on the CNI Report, nearer home, too, than the western nations, many of whom had backed him openly when he resigned but have not moved forward since as the MDP might have expected.

In Male’, after the Delhi visit, President Nasheed outlined the party’s options and propositions on the CNI findings. The MDP would want him reinstated if the report endorsed its conspiracy theory, early presidential polls in case of an unclear verdict, and elections when due by November 2012, if the CNI found no substance in the party’s argument.

The toughest decision for the MDP, or any other party in the country, would be to decide on an unclear verdict as the possibilities are many and varied.

The most comprehensive of an ‘unclear verdict’ could mean that the CNI finds no substance in the MDP argument about a plot, but still finds evidence of indiscipline in sections of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) and the Maldivian Police Service, punishable through the due processes.

However, all assumptions of every kind are based on the premise that the CNI could come up with a unanimous finding, or a majority verdict. Given the complexity of the situation, then and now, it is not unlikely that individual CNI members could come up with varied findings, based on their perceptions and understanding of the facts collated and evidence recorded.

Such a course could mean opening the Pandora’s Box of competing and at times conflicting arguments all over again. The question would then be raised if the CNI report would be taken up to the Supreme Court and, if its constitutionality too would be challenged at that late hour. There is also nothing in the Constitution that could force incumbent President Waheed Hassan to resign from office, if the CNI report endorsed the ‘plot’ theory but does not find any role for him, as suggested by some MDP leaders early on.

Even if the CNI report were to find President Waheed, or any other on the political side of the government, guilty of conspiring to overthrow his predecessor, there is nothing in the law to reverse the politico-constitutional reality of his incumbency and possible continuity until the time elections became otherwise due. It is in this context, the MDP’s neighbourhood visit assumes significance. The idea seems to bring moral pressure on President Waheed and political parties extending political and parliamentary support to him since his assuming office.

Among the parties in the Government comprising in turn a collective majority in the 77-member Parliament, only the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP), founded by former President Maumoon Gayoom and now led by his one-time running-mate, Ahmed Thasmeen Ali, is committed to early polls in case of a positive finding on the conspiracy theory. The breakaway Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), also founded by President Gayoom, has other ideas on the subject.

Talking to newsmen after speaking before the CNI panel a fortnight back, President Gayoom said that the party would not accept the CNI findings if it backed the conspiracy theory. More recently, Defence Minister Nazim, identified with the PPM in a way, has declared that the government would take no action against personnel of the armed forces if the CNI found any of them guilty of indiscipline. There is already the possibility of such conflicting notions leading to contradictions and confrontation when the CNI report is out.

Maldives cannot afford political instability, which has consequences for the nation in more ways than one. The immediate concern would be on tourism-driven economy front, but continued instability could act and react in ways that the government and political party leaders of the country cannot perceive now, or if and when they begin unfolding.

It may be a good idea for the government parties to formulate their strategy early on, and come up with a joint commitment like the MDP. That could throw some clarity about the emerging situation, but not much by way of resolving the continuing political deadlock which has greater consequences for the nation than a presidential poll — conducted now or a year later.

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]

The author is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

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Comment: MDP decision revives hopes on Roadmap Talks

The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has now called off the daily protest demonstrations in the capital city of Male’, demanding early presidential polls ahead of those due in July-October 2013.

This in a way has revived the hopes of early resumption of the All-Party Roadmap Talks, initiated by President Mohammed Waheed Hassan at the insistence of visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai in March.

More importantly, the agenda for the Roadmap Talks have elements that have the nation’s long-term interests in mind, and on which a certain unanimity has emerged, owing to national compulsions that are for real.

Independent of existing expectations, both within the party and outside, the MDP leadership has gone ahead with the protest rally in the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.

However with the Eid festival season arriving with consequences for the local community, including trade and business, the MDP seems to have thought better of it. The party said that the decision to withdraw the protests should lead to the revival of the peace talks, in which the MDP’s demand for fast-tracking presidential polls is a part of the agenda.

Reacting positively to the MDP’s decision, the President’s Office said that it would help in the revival of the Talks. Following protests against Vice-President Waheed Deen in suburban Hulhulumale Island, off Male’, President Waheed has since clarified that harassment of government officials should stop before he would consider participating in the talks.

President Waheed said that he was in continuous touch with Ahmed Mujuthaba, moderator for the All-Party Talks. He has also been promised by all participant parties that either their leaders or a senior deputy (with decision-making authority) would be fielded when the talks resumed. Earlier rounds had failed to reach any decision owing to the diffused focus of the talks and also improper representation by the parties.

Interestingly, the influential former President and founder-leader of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had refused to return to the talks until his successor Mohamed Nasheed tendered an ‘unconditional apology’ for charging him with a plot behind the latter’s February 7 resignation, has not reacted yet to the protest-withdrawal by the MDP. He was not satisfied with the ‘qualified apology’ tendered by Nasheed’s aides, and has also said that despite the international probe that is now on, he would not accept the ‘coup theory’.

Intermediate confusion however crept in after the MDP interpreted the All-Party Talks being called by Vice-President Deen for resuming the stalled Parliament session, as one leading to early elections. The government has since clarified that the Vice-President’s talks flowed from Speaker Abdullah Shahid’s decision to indefinitely suspend the proceedings of the Majlis on July 31, following days of interruptions in the house. In a way, any decision on early resumption of Parliament session will help create the right environment for the revival of the Roadmap Talks, too.

Will the CoNI report come in handy?

Independent of the agenda-point on early presidential polls, the Roadmap Talks concerns national priorities that have been overtaken time and again by the political developments of the past years. On presidential polls, there is a general agreement that the international probe by the Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI) appointed by President Waheed, holds the key. The probe, with a retired Singaporean Judge on board, is expected to submit its report by the extended deadline of August 31.

Some government parties have since murmured their protests about the inclusion of an MDP nominee in the probe. Yet, they did not contest the nominations when the government – of which they were all a part – made its original nominations.

However, there is a greater realisation that any advancement of the presidential polls can be done only by Parliament amending the Constitution through a two-thirds majority, or by President Waheed quitting office, based on a public statement to the effect after the MDP flagged the ‘plot theory’ in the aftermath of President Nasheed’s resignation.

In the latter case, too, there is no constitutional guarantee to the effect, nor is the constitutional position clear. Under the law, the Vice-President steps into the shoes of the President, as Waheed did, and unless the former too quits, there be no case for early polls, it is argued. Under the Constitution, the Parliament Speaker takes over if the top two jobs become vacant, and has to conduct presidential polls within three months. Whether the CoNI report could lead to such a situation, or if the MDP would return to the streets, either way are questions for the future.

Commonality yes, consensus, not yet

On larger issues that have been flagged at the Roadmap Talks, there is some commonality of approach in individual parties, and across the board in many others. On the issue of early elections, for instance, the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP), which is a partner in the government, has said that it would support the MDP position (without saying so) if the CoNI report endorsed the ‘plot theory’. With the DRP’s backing as the party-wise position in Parliament now stands, the MDP could hope to get the Constitution amended to facilitate early polls. But there are ifs and buts there too.

However, a consensus of sorts is required to emerge, at least among the major political players, if only to ensure stability of the polity and continuity of policies, independent of the party or leader elected to power. It would be more so considering the inherent inability of the Maldivian polity to throw up a strong president with a first round victory for self on his own and his party’s steam. Worse still would be the situation of the kind that haunted the Nasheed presidency, when the government party did not enjoy a parliamentary majority, required for amending laws, reflecting the political agenda and electoral manifesto of the president or of the parliamentary majority – whenever it cannot be both.

On governance issues, on which the MDP had quarrels with the rest of the nation’s polity even while President Nasheed was in office, the party may be tempted to have a relook at its position since. For instance, the Civil Court and the High Court have consistently come down on the Maldives Police Force for forcing the MDP cadres out of their Usfasgandu ‘camp site’ in Male. A legal row has emerged between the government and the MDP-controlled Male Municipal Council over the usage of the Usfasgandu property, taken out on lease by the latter.

The MDP thus may have to relook its position on institutional reforms. In the case of the judiciary, for instance, the party should wait till the seven-year deadline for empowerment and training ends. Having talked about institutional reforms much while President Nasheed was in office, the MDP should instead be working on a roadmap with specifics on training and legislation, possibly as a part of its promised poll manifesto.

On other issues of common concern outlined in the agenda for the Roadmap Talks, economic issues take a high place. Independent of what individual parties have to say in public, there is a general acceptance about the need for relooking at the budget and economic issues. If the Nasheed Government was vociferous in proceeding with economic reforms, subsidies-cut and increasing the tax revenue to the government, the successor Waheed government has proceeded on similar and at times stronger lines. Government leaders are not shy of talking about austerity measures, and government parties cannot change halfway through.

On the equally sensitive issue of allowing resorts on inhabited islands, which was among the charges levelled against the Nasheed Government, the Waheed presidency has since granted permission for allowing a third party to set up a resort on Thanburudh island training and recreation facility of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), the nation’s army.

While it may be a stand-alone case, compared to sanction for resorts in other inhabited islands, the question remains if that third-party could involve overseas investors or partners, in the context of the controversy still surrounding the ‘GMR contract’ for the airport project.

In this context that the Waheed Government’s current initiative for amending the Finance Act, to give the Executive freedom from parliamentary oversight and passage for selling public assets to private parties assumes significance, in political and economic terms.

As may be recalled, Parliament rushed to amend the Finance Act in 2010 after the Nahseed Government had entered into the Male airport modernisation contract with the Indian infrastructure giant, the GMR Group. It is another matter that the GMR contract did not involve the sale of any Maldivian Government assets, yet the otherwise divided opposition of the times, all of them now on the Treasury Bench, joined hands, among other things, to depict the modernisation contract as an ‘assets sale’.

Questions also remain about the wisdom of the present government entering into a joint venture with the MNDF, for the new company to enter into businesses and investments, to augment the budget for the nation’s defence forces. Experience elsewhere in South Asia too has proved that independent economic resources in the hands of the armed forces, if only after a long time, have made the services independent of the nation’s political and bureaucratic leadership in other ways, too.

Though not mentioned in the Roadmap Talks, such are also issues on which a national consensus needs to evolve, and clarity and consistency thrown into the operationalisation of whatever decision that is arrived at.

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]

The author is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

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Comment: A case for ‘institutional reforms’ in the Maldives

The January 16 arrest of Criminal Court Chief Justice Abdulla Mohamed, and the subsequent prosecution of former President Mohammed Nasheed and certain senior officials should now indicate the kind of ‘institutional reforms’ that the Maldives requires.

The current political impasse has had its immediate origins purportedly in the arrest of Judge Abdullah and may continue with subsequent criminal charges facing President Nasheed for his part in the detention.  Therefore the need for addressing these issues is urgent.

Yet, this should be attempted with the full realisation that Rome cannot be built in a day, as the erstwhile ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) might have hoped for.

In all fairness, the political crisis leading to the controversial February 7 resignation of President Nasheed did not have its origins in the arrest of Judge Abdullah. Nor would it have been the end-game.

Yet, it purportedly alienated one more section of the Maldivian society, this time the legal fraternity. Some saw it as a diversionary tactic at best when the Nasheed Government was besieged by the political opposition. It gave an additional cause for the ‘December 23 movement’ of Islamic NGOs to press their demand for President Nasheed’s exit.

The movement from the very beginning had the blessings and participation of the otherwise diverse and at times desperate group of opposition parties in the country. This fact should not be overlooked either.

The arrest of Justice Abdulla by the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), the nation’s armed forces, raises questions. So has the criminal case against President Nasheed and others.

The MNDF was created in 2004 by bifurcating the notorious National Security Service (NSS) under then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. This was done precisely with the intention of ending the misuse and abuse of the NSS, which at the time had policing powers, rights and responsibilities, as well. The bifurcation involved the creation of a Maldivian Police Force, which had the policing powers, and the MNDF was made the nation’s armed forces, as in any other country. But old habits did not die either then, or since.

Politicisation of security forces

Justice Abdulla’s arrest, those of two opposition leaders, namely, Abdullah Yameen of the People’s Alliance (PA) and Gasim Ibrahim of the  Jumhoree Party (JP) in mid-2010, and also a day-long closure of the nation’s Supreme Court all involved the MNDF.  Though these detentions should have stopped with the police.

Even after bifurcation of the NSS and the emergence of multi-party democracy, in that order, the Government is excessively dependent on the MNDF for law and order duties. At the institutional-level, the MNDF and the MPF have continued to take orders from the government of the day.

At the personal-level, this may have become possible only with top-level transfers with every change of government and change of ministers’ loyalty, leading to constant and confusing politicisation of the security forces in the country.

It does not stop there. Apart from President Nasheed and his Defence Minister, the Attorney-General had also named then MNDF chief, Major General Moosa Ali Jaleel, Brigader General Ibrahim Mohamed Didi, heading the troops in the national capital, and Colonel Mohamed Ziyad for the arrest of Justice Abdulla.

They were removed from their positions immediately after the Waheed Government took over. So was then Commissioner of Police of Male.

This was a repeat of the situation when President Nasheed assumed office. In the present case however, Brigader General Didi had played a key role in defence of Male when Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries attacked Male in 1988. He was posted back to Addu City in the South after President Nasheed’s resignation, and lost no time in resigning from the armed forces after three-plus decades of service after the government moved the Hulhulumale court’. To the local media, he said that he did not want to compromise the dignity of his office and uniform by appearing as an accused in a civilian court.

Through the past months since President Nasheed resigned from office, the MDP has charged both the MNDF and police with being part of the conspiracy to overthrow his Government along with their political opponents.

Obviously, they have the respective leaderships of these forces at the time in mind. As they are also not tired of pointing out, elements within the two uniformed services had indeed joined the street-protests demanding his resignation since the night before he quit office.

This can demoralise the already demoralised forces. It could cause more problems than solving any, even as the nation is inching towards fresh presidential polls – either when due in the second half of next year, or earlier, as demanded by the MDP.

The circumstances under which President Nasheed resigned are the subject matter of an independent probe by a Commission of Inquiry (CNI), to which the MDP, as also the Commonwealth have named two members, since.

Pending the inquiry, the MDP has not stopped repeating those charges, or adding fresh ones, particularly with regard to the party’s street-protests to permit or regulate which there are no specific laws in the country. That way, a whole spectrum of legislation needs to be drafted or amended by Parliament, combining the demands of a modern nation with the customs and traditions that have the sanction of law, as elsewhere.

Conflict of interest

Various charges of misconduct and maleficence had been laid against Justice Abdulla prior to his arrest. At present, Presidential Advisor, Dr Hassan Saeed had laid out charges against Justice when he was the Attorney-General under President Gayoom.

The Supreme Court, a creature of the 2008 Constitution, too had occasions to pull him up. So did the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), another controversial institution in which the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party of President Nasheed did not have faith in despite its constitutional character.

Throughout the period of Justice Abdulla’s detention during the Nasheed regime and after his release and resumption of office under the incumbent dispensation of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, the MDP has claimed that he was a ‘threat to national security’. This was at variance with -or, was it in addition to  the earlier allegations against Justice Abdulla?

If the new charge was true, the MDP Government did not substantiate it. If it were true still, the question arises how a successor Government could take a narrow view of things and order the judge’s release and immediate reinstatement.

The recent report of the Maldivian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) says that Justice Abdulla had to undergo mental torture and harassment in detention, and efforts also were made to persuade him to leave the country. It ruled out physical torture of any nature, however.

As promised on assuming office, the new Government has since moved the courts, charging President Nasheed, Minister Tholhath and three senior military officials of the time, among others, with unlawful detention of Judge Abdullah. To pre-empt charges of ‘conflict of interest’ the Government moved the Magistrate Court in suburban Hulhulumale Island, off the national capital of Male, where Justice Abdulla is seated.

However, the magistrate ruled that he could not assume jurisdiction to try the case without Chief Justice Abdulla assigning the same, and the Judicial Services Commission too endorsed it. The Magistrate has not dismissed the petition but has only returned the same to the Prosecutor-General’s office, with the indication for the latter to rectify the process.

It was commendable that the Government had thought about the possibilities of ‘conflict of interest’ issue being whipped up if Justice Abdulla had tried this case. Yet, judicial systems across the democratic world dictate that such charges are laid by the other party to a criminal case. Better still, in most such cases, the Judge concerned would recuse himself when the situation so demanded.

The short-cut approach adopted by the Government should be seen as a part of the institutional weakness that haunts the process. As such, no motives need to be attributed to the same at this stage, to that limited extent again.

Banishment as a punishment

It is likely that the Government will revive the case against President Nasheed at the appropriate judicial forum. If courts found him guilty, President Nasheed would be barred from contesting elections. Already, the MDP has declared that the party would not participate in any presidential polls where President Nasheed is barred from contesting. Be it as it may, the law relating to the offence for which President Nasheed is being charged with is a fit case for review and reform, it would seem.

The section provides for ‘banishment’ for a term, or imprisonment for three years, or a fine of Rf 2000. If sentenced to more than 12 months, President Nasheed cannot contest elections until after the completion of three years, or he has been granted a pardon (by the President).

It is very likely that no other democracy, and certainly not in the South Asian region, still has ‘banishment’ as a part of its penal provisions. In the Maldives, not only banishment but ‘house arrest’ also continues on the statute book, as a punishment for crimes. Contemporary history is replete with instances where either or both punishments have been freely handed down to political adversaries of the Government, since the pre-democracy days, dating beyond President Gayoom’s 30-year rule.

Other areas of law, like banking, labour all need to be updated.  The same can be said for legislation outlining migration and property too.

The MDP that has been talking vociferously in favour of fast-tracking legal and judicial reforms has been concentrating mostly on individuals, not necessarily institutions and certainly not processes, which alone add to the value of democracies.

Other parties are not doing that either. They seem to derive comfort from the status quo, not necessarily because they favour it but mostly because the complexities of the social and political issues that such reforms could throw up may be too much for the polity to address.  Conversely, the reforms process thus far has introduced institutions that are superfluous for a nation of 350,000 people. The number of commissions serving and servicing the Government employees, including the police, is a case in point.

Yet, neither has the credibility of the ‘integrity commissions’ been ensured, nor have they been allowed to settle down without continued criticism of their functioning.

The MDP calls it ‘institutional reforms’, the new Government of President Waheed says there is need for ‘institutional empowerment’. In relation to institutions like the higher judiciary, enough time has not been given for either.

The Supreme Court itself is a creature of the new Constitution, and the law provides for a seven-year term for ‘capacity-building’ in judiciary across the country. No efforts seem to have been made in this regard, nor any attention known to have been given on the kind of reforms or empowerment that is needed, and methods of doing it within the seven-year period.

After the change of leadership, both sides seem to have stopped talking about their respective positions on the issue. The All-Party Roadmap Talks was set up to address such issues, but it has grabbled only with trivial issues, in comparison.

Discussing trivia, instead

There needs to be a greater realisation in all sections of the nation’s policy and society that democracy is not a half-way house, to be built, abandoned, and re-built at whim. It is an evolutionary process, with which individual societies experiment a perceived format and make adjustments and amendments as their nation’s circumstances demanded.

There are no successful models, or failed models in democracies, for an intended democracy to pick off the shelf and display the wares. It has to be meticulously worked upon, brick by brick.

A generation can at best lay strong foundations, but it would be for the future ones to build upon it, brick by brick, floor after one more floor. There would be no finality still, as democracies evolve and need to evolve with the new generation, lest they should be rendered redundant and be described as ‘autocracy’ of some kind or the other.

That has also been the Maldivian experience, through much of the 20th century. The advent of a new generation, a new century does not make for the experience. It can at best be a cause for experimentation. In all this, a nation’s patience is the key.

It is not that the current crop of leaders in Maldivian polity does not understand. The agenda for the Roadmap Talks that they agreed upon after the change of Government in February focusses on much of what needs to be done.

The prioritisation of the agenda also underscored their understanding of the evolving situation, overall. Yet, on the ground, they are talking politics, not policies. This does not mean that the events leading up to the February 7 resignation of President Nasheed need not be gone into.

It is not about individuals again, but about institutions, including the Presidency and the armed forces, in situations that the Constitution-makers had not provided for but wanted to avoid in the first place. The findings of the CNI could thus form a part of the Roadmap agenda, as much needs to be done on institution-building, all-round, if the new-generation Maldivian dream of democracy has to be nourished and cherished.

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: Will early polls end this drift?

At one-level, it is business as usual in Maldives – at another, it is calm before possible storm.

While an element of political stability attaching to the government of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik in recent weeks after the destabilising events of February 7, has ensured that day-to-day business of the Government does not suffer, it has also flagged new issues that could challenge the internals of the uneasy coalition that he has been heading.

Together, they have the potential to create a façade of self-belief, which otherwise boils down to self-illusion and self-destruction of the kind that the MDP predecessor in office had practised while in power.

It took the MDP and President Mohammed Nasheed greater and persistent efforts to arrive at where they did in less than three years in office. Given the composition and contextualisation of the Government coalition after he resigned on that fateful February 7, they would instead have to put in greater efforts and display equal sincerity to make their present scheme work – and well into the future.

In the absence of a commitment about the future, particularly over the presidential polls, whenever held, the ruling coalition is already drifting towards unsure approach not necessarily to administration, but to their politics. At the centre of it all, however, is their individual approach to the presidential polls and individualistic perceptions about their comparative electoral strength, as much within the combine as outside.

In a way, the drift also owes to a creeping underlying yet unmistakable belief of individual Government parties that the ‘common political threat’ from the MDP has receded, and at the same time the presidential polls, due in November 2013, cannot be delayed eternally – even if President Nasheed’s demand for early elections could be scuttled.

They had worked it in the past, when President Maumoon Gayoom was in power. Ushering in multi-party democracy, many now in the Government had joined hands with the MDP to oust the incumbent through the power of the ballot. In contrast, the February 7 exit of President Nasheed might have been controversial but the ‘ganging up’ political adversaries against him within three years of his emerging as the Maldivian mascot for democracy was also owed to the ‘democratic distrust’ that had crept into the political scheme. Today, the talk of presidential polls, whenever held, is the distinguishing and delineating factor, so to say.

For his part, President Nasheed has been travelling overseas increasingly, carrying his message about the ‘coup’ that forced his resignation. The inherent differences within the Government parties, often based on individualist approaches and claims, is coming out in the open – and inevitably so. Ironically, it could be construed as a measure of lessened threat from President Nasheed and the MDP. It is thus that the PPM and PA, owing allegiance respectively to President Gayoom and his half-brother Abdulla Yameen, have formed a parliamentary coalition, excluding the DRP parent of the former and also the Jumbooree Party (JP), identified with billionaire-businessman Gasim Ibrahim.

The PPM has also begun openly accusing DRP leader Thasmeen Ali of colluding with the MDP Opposition, which charge the latter had denied vehemently. Yet, the DRP has been put on the defensive within the ruling combine, and embarrassingly so.

What can a ‘running-mate’ do?

With a substantial showing in the presidential polls of 2008 and recent by-elections to the People’s Majlis or Parliament and local councils, the JP has been ‘poaching’ MPs and other leaders from other parties – including one MP from the DRP partner in Government. The MDP in particular cannot complain, as under the Nasheed presidency in the democracy era, they had started off the game.

The Constitution provides for a run-off, second round polling between the top two scorers, if none of the candidates crossed the mid-way mark in the first phase of presidential polls. The strategy and effort of individual political parties in the Government thus is to be able to get into the second round, and negotiate with the rest from a position of strength. This would precisely be a repeat of the 2008 polls, in their perception, when Gasim Ibrahim, and another runner-up, Dr Hassan Saeed, at present Special Advisor to President Waheed, transferred their first-round votes to Candidate Nasheed, who was the Opposition topper with 25 per cent vote-share against incumbent President Gayoom’s 40 per cent.

Today, the roles have reversed, what with President Nasheed being seen as the potential candidate to top the list. Having nominated him as their presidential nominee already, through a democratic process prescribed under the law, the MDP believes that he would win hands down in the first round. He would have to, given the present alignment of political parties, as there is nothing to suggest that he would be able to fill the gap if pushed into the run-off phase. It is in this context, the PPM charges against DRP colluding with the MDP needs to be viewed. However, the DRP seems to believe that the party’s cadre-base and vote-base are as much anti-Nasheed in their political preferences as they are anti-Gayoom, leaving the leadership with little manoeuvrability in alliance-formation. It is a real threat facing the DRP, particularly after ‘rebel MDPs’, comprising elected but ousted party president Ibrahim Didi and his deputy AlhanFahmy, with whom the party might have shared a common dilemma, chose to join the JP, instead. Didi now heads the JP and party founder Gasim Ibrahim is a sure candidate for the presidency.

The problem with coalition politics of the nature, which has suited experienced and matured presidential democracies as in the US, is that the running-mate to the presidential candidate is expected to bring in additional votes to fill the winning-gap. President Nasheed does not have anyone before him who could be described as such, if the MDP’s calculations about a first-round victory for him need testing on the ground. Individual Government parties are keener on demonstrating their individual vote-share with a second round in mind than forming an alliance for the first round, where political partners could choose their presidential candidate and vice-presidential running-mate through electoral negotiations. It was so in 2008, when Candidate Nasheed chose Waheed, founder of the GaumeeItthihaad Party (GIP) as his running-mate, but his experience since assuming office, flowing from his inability to share power with his Vice-President, might dissuade others of the ilk from attempting some such measure at present.

‘Transitional justice’ and vindictiveness

It does not stop there. In recent days, the Majlis, where the Government parties are in a majority, has passed a resolution for a parliamentary committee to probe certain decisions of President Nasheed while in office. It is unclear if the immunity available to former Presidents, which President Nasheed had underlined after demitting office, would extend to cover parliamentary resolutions of the kind. More importantly, in an impromptu yet immediate effort at national reconciliation after electoral results were known in 2008, President-elect Nasheed announced legal immunity for his predecessor.

He also called on President Gayoom soon after his election, and the latter too facilitated smooth and seamless transfer of power, putting at rest all speculation that he would try to thwart the democratic expression of his people. Though once subsequently, President Gayoom was summoned to a police station for an enquiry regarding a criminal case dating back to his days in office, nothing was allowed to come off such efforts, which were as half-hearted as they were off-handed.

The Government and the parties forming a majority for it in the Majlis have been talking about filing criminal and constitutional cases against President Nasheed and his erstwhile Cabinet members and MDP leaders. Some of it has proceeded on expected lines while no major case has been filed against any top leaders thus far. Indications are that the Government might take its time deciding on whom to target, how, why and when – more in terms of political expediency rather than legal/constitutional accountability.

As and when it happened, the MDP is sure to cry foul, and charge the Government with political vindictiveness. Its political argument might stand vindicated if the higher judiciary, as has been happening since the February 7 change-over, stands in the way. The Waheed leadership, however, has thus far kept its promise of not interfering with the judicial freedom, a charge levelled against the predecessor leadership – and, not without some justification, as the locking up of the Supreme Court by the nation’s armed forces in mid-2010 showed.

Charges and counter-charges of vindictiveness of the nature have their political fallout. The MDP, while in power, had revived such talk by constantly referring to ‘transitional justice’ when President Gayoom failed the party’s expectations by returning to active politics. A catchy phrase nonetheless, ‘transitional justice’ boiled down to legal action against the Gayoom leadership for alleged wrong-doings during its tenure. During the ‘December 23 Movement’ run-up to the February 7 episode and later, MDP hard-liners have not tired of blaming the ‘pacifist’ Nasheed presidency for taking a lenient view of his predecessor’s undemocratic and corrupt actions – including five-time imprisonment for his would-be successor.

Yet, any talk now of reviving ‘transitional justice’ on the MDP’s part if returned to power, or similar ranting by the incumbent Government parties has the potential to make the run-up to the presidential poll more tension-ridden than already.

Tottering economy

Though the MDP’s predictions of a post-resignation steep fall in tourist arrivals have not been proved right, the nation’s economy continues to totter, going beyond concurrent global and regional inconsistencies of the times. JP’s Gasim Ibrahim, a former Finance Minister under the Gayoom dispensation, has begun talking about a ‘bankrupt Government’ while Presidential Advisor Hassan Saeed too has been cautioning the nation that Maldives cannot afford to live beyond its means. Here, they share the perception of the MDP and President Nasheed, when the latter was in office, yet the Waheed Government has revisited some of the IMF-dictate economic reforms policies of the predecessor-administration. Recently, the Government took a Rf 300 million loan from the Maldivian Monetary Authority (MMA), a State institution, and there is an accompanying controversy over approaching Parliament for a post facto endorsement instead of prior clearance.

What could help to bring back political order, which alone would ensure governmental stability at a time when the crying need of the economy seems the same? On political stability alone would depend foreign investments, which would be among the near-permanent sources of economic revitalisation for countries such as Maldives, particularly so in the South Asian neighbourhood, and for a long time to come before they became self-reliant. For instance, the February 8 violence that followed President Nasheed’s resignation, forced or otherwise, while not exactly rattling foreign tourists, who form the backbone of the nation’s economy, however may have make new investors to hold back their decisions, at least until political stability that they can feel and vouchsafe for returns to the Indian Ocean archipelago.

It is not as if early presidential polls would automatically ensure political stability. The problem with the Nasheed presidency was the MDP’s inability to retain its political coalition until after the parliamentary elections six months later. This meant that the Government under the Executive President system did not have a parliamentary majority – it did not have one even at inception – leading to horse-trading on the one hand, and rejection of Government’s initiative on the other. That included a resolution calling upon the Government to obtain Majlis’ approval for every major contractual decision, as with the ‘GMR case’, and refusal to endorse some Cabinet nominees of the President. Similarly, post-poll, the new President would have to ensure peace on the streets, which alone would ensure not only investors’ confidence in the nation but also the people’s confidence in democracy.

For now, all talks of early presidential polls have been shelved after the Government parties made a near-mockery of the All-Party Roadmap Talks by taking up a long list of 30 issues that were not on the original agenda, but included ‘black magic’ as among those needed national priority and hence attention. There is no talk again of reviving the all-party talks, which willy-nilly seems to be getting linked to the progress of the National Commission of Inquiry (NCI), appointed by President Waheed and expanded to include an MDP nominee and an independent member from Singapore, at the instance of the international community.

The expanded NCI has been tasked to submit its report by July-end, but the chances are that they may require extension(s) to be able to come up with anything concrete – which by the nature of things, could at best be recommendatory in character, and not mandatory in nature.

The chances are that whichever side whose arguments the NCI does not buy would not accept the findings and act on the same. And the Government, as is known, would be keen on reviving the Roadmap Talks, whose agenda included early presidential polls, only if the NCI hands down a split-verdict. All this would boil down to only one thing. That the stake-holders in the Roadmap talks could well begin with committing themselves to the findings of the NCI, and also begin taking their job seriously so as to build a national consensus, not only over the presidential polls but equally so on other issues, too. In the absence of such a course, any divergence of opinion between the Executive and the Legislature in the months after fresh presidential poll could bring the nation to a virtual stand-still, or lead to further horse-trading, which would be a mockery of democracy, all the same.

Worse still, between now and the presidential polls, whenever held, the inevitable internal dissensions within the ruling coalition, if it could be called so, could lead to mutual acrimony of the administrative kind and initiative, even as their attempt to cobble together an electoral strategy to keep the MDP adversary at bay could strain the infant democracy, still.

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: Conflicting interim reports highlight political spat

Two interim reports from the two sides, so to say, and the focus is slowly slipping away from the work on hand for the Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) probing then-Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s resignation of February 7. It is back more ore less in the realm of politics and public-spat.

Of the two reports, if they could be called so, one has the relative legitimacy of being produced by the outgoing CNI before it was expanded, and the other from President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), at whose instance the CNI is being expanded in the first place. Who jumped the gun and why are questions for which neither side may have convincing answers.

It does not stop there. The police have since arrested a senior intelligence officer from the Nasheed era, for providing information for the MDP report. Chief Superintendent of Police Mohamed Hameed and Staff Sergeant Ahmed Naseer were arrested, based on court warrants, for talking to the MDP probe.

The Government side has also questioned the propriety of President Nasheed’s one-time Defence Minister and later National Security Advisor, AmeenFaizal, who co-authored the MDP report and sought to establish the party’s earlier claims of a ’military/police coup’ forcing President Nasheed’s resignation. At the same time, Assistant Police Commissioner Hassan Habeeb has reportedly complained a that a Quran teacher has stopped giving tuition classes for his daughter, citing his name figuring in the MDP report.

President Waheed Hassan has since sort of clarified that the expanded CNI with an MDP nominee and a retired Judge from Singapore as external member on the panel would review the work done by the probe team thus far, before proceeding with the task on hand.

Yet, it is anybody’s guess if and why the Government did not discourage the CNI from publishing the ’time-line’, when it was due for review. The CNI’s claim that the publication was to encourage the public to come up with their views within a given deadline does not wash. The people at large were not privy to the controversies attending on President Nasheed’s resignation, and they could not have been called to act as jury in the case, which could only be described as tendency towards ’mobocracy’ of sorts.

The MDP can be expected to raise the issue of the outgoing CNI publicising its incomplete work as prejudicing the views of the expanded CNI and also that of the public. There is some validity in the party’s position as none of the three members of the incumbent CNI are expected to opt out. Thus, they could still have defended their work even if the two new members were to contest the same. Incidentally, they would still hold numerical majority in the expanded CNI. The party, citing the CNI, has also demanded President Waheed’s resignation, but has been selective about its side of the story flowing from the CNI time-line. Having launched mob violence repeatedly on the streets of Male, the national capital, and other urban centres across the country, the party may have also lost the moral right to question the methods of others ? Not that such a tendency by anyone should be encouraged, now or later.

The publication of the CNI time-line should not absolve the MDP of the charge that they too might have shot themselves in the foot all over again. Having demanded steadfastly for expanding the CNI and having its nominee on board, along with one representing the international community so to say, the party should have waited for the probe report to be out before coming out with its clarifications, if any. Two wrongs do not a right make, and possible MDP’s claims that the existing CNI was the one that started off the game should not wash, either. The party could be charged with seeking to influence the expanded CNI and the people at large, just as it has charged the existing CNI already.

The MDP has also not denied the charge flowing from the arrest of the two police officers, who were believed to have talked to the party’s probe team. Instead, the party’s international spokesperson Hamid Abdul Ghafoor has charged the Government with purging ’police whistle-blowers’, as if to defend their right to speak to private probes, particularly when an official one was halfway through its work. Even granting that the police officers concerned had talked to the MDP team in good faith that the Government probe is an eye-wash, it is anybody’s guess why the party decided to proceed with the publication of the report of its two-member team after its demands on the CNI front had been met, through international intervention. Thus, it is not the party whose credibility alone is under a cloud now.

Pressuring the probe at birth

Prima facie, avoidable controversies of the kind will pressure the expanded CNI at birth, and also take precious time off their work-schedule, viewing and reviewing the work already done, more closely than may have been otherwise. This could mean that the expanded, five-member CNI may not be able to meet the July-end deadline for submitting its report. The three-member, original CNI could not meet the May-end deadline earlier, after a decision was taken to expand the same, to include representatives proposed by the MDP and the Commonwealth.

This could push back future political negotiations, particularly on the MDP demand for early poll for the presidency that much more. One can safely conclude at this stage that the MDP’s year-end deadline for the purpose may be dismissed as impractical. Thus far, the Government parties have been arguing that the demand was improper and not provided for in the Constitution as it exists now.

The constitution of the CNI also suffers from another lacuna, among many, which the inexperience of the nation’s polity – particularly that of the more vociferous MDP – has not addressed. Having been constituted by President Waheed, the CNI will have to submit its report to him. Through the past months since the exit of President Nasheed, the MDP in particular has charged President Waheed with being party to the ’conspiracy’. It has always demanded the resignation of President Waheed. Under such circumstances, the propriety of the CNI submitting its report to President Waheed could be under question. One can expect the MDP in particular to raise such issues, post facto, but it may be in the fitness of things to address such minor irritants early on as they could be blown out of proportion on a later day.

Whither Roadmap talks?

Even without what could be described as inevitable delays in the working of the CNI, the Roadmap Talks for political reconciliation remain dead-locked. The agenda for the talks is noteworthy for including in it concerns for consensus over the nation’s economy, going beyond the realm of immediate politics. There are also references to the need for constitutional amendments for protecting national institutions. These are serious issues, which need to be taken up in a spirit of national understanding and cohesion, going beyond the immediate demands of partisan politics of one kind or the other. Many of the issues on board relate to the dynamic nature of democratic politics and Constitution-making for a nation that had remained politically insulated from modern influences and practices. The Indian contribution to the Roadmap talks too should be viewed from the South Asian neighbour’s experience with the dynamic processes of democratic well-being.

It does not flow that the Roadmap Talks should be finding solutions to each of the identified problems facing the nation, here and now. As the processes that it had set in motion for its functioning the all-party grouping had started with prioritising the agenda for discussion, decision-making and implementation. They now need to focus on these greater aspects of democratic being and Constitution-making, which are both dynamic processes. Having set the nation’s priority, the stake-holders can then prioritise between those needing their immediate attention and solution, and those that need to mature further before the nation could apply its collective wisdom to problem-solving.

Ensuring the independence of constitutional institutions and establishing their credibility have to be dovetailed if Maldivian democracy has to mean something more than what governance was all about in the pre-democracy era. It is not only about the MDP picking up individuals with a past but also insisting only on publicising their past, and politicking almost exclusively on the same. Such an approach meant that there was paucity of ideas for the Nasheed Government other than those prescribed on the economic front by an external organisation as the IMF. This created a chasm within the polity and even otherwise, which the Government of the day sought to brush under the democracy carpet.

’Conflict as comfort zone’

Instead, it is all about addressing the larger issues and concerns that related to the past, and the accompanying circumstances. There are few MDP leaders, for instance, who do not have their past linked to what the party often describes as the ’dreaded regime’ of former President Maumoon Gayoom. The second-line leaders in a cadre-based party like the MDP and in a country like MDP with no democratic past to boast of at any point in time, do not have the kind of exposure and experience required to govern a nation as complex as Maldives, however ’tiny’ it might look for the outside world.

Independent of the numbers that have been added to the MDP membership list after the party came to power, the core cadre of the party still seem to live in the past. The have been fed on an ideology and dogma that have no relation to ground realities of politics and public life in any democracy. They have also been slow in on-job learning, in relation to the attitudinal changes required to be the party in power. This trend seems to dominate the decision-making processes in the party, post-resignation, as well, and the MDP seems shy of reviewing its own contributions to the expanding political mess and the repeated constitutional deadlocks.

This does not mean that the MDP alone has the responsibility in the matter. Most, if not all political parties in the Government at present, were partners with the MDP in ushering in democracy ahead of the presidential polls in 2008. All of them, including then President Gayoom, had facilitated the democratic transition. While most others also facilitated the election of MDP’s Nasheed as President in the second, run-off round, as the incumbent, President Gayoom willingly handed over power without protest or plots, which some MDP leaders had otherwise anticipated during the run-up to the presidential polls. They too thus share the responsibility for having democracy take deep-roots, particularly since no one in the nation’s polity seems to be visualising any reversal of democracy. Yet, the responsibility of the MDP in ushering in democracy, and the party’s attendant duty for understanding the processes even better, is a role that the leadership has to take more seriously than at present.

For now, Maldives and Maldivians can take heart that they have only ’telescoped’ the dynamism of democracies into a much shorter span than in nations of the world, including South Asian neighbours like India and Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Yet, Maldives cannot afford to continue with conflict as comfort zone of internal contradictions, to the exclusion of the work on hand and issues of every day governance that can be put off only at peril to the nation and the people, and polity and political leaderships. They need to act, and no time is better than the hour that has already been lost.

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: Black magic a national policy priority?

As anticipated, the three-day Bandos Resort retreat for participants at the Roadmap Talks has ended inconclusively. The fact that the representatives for the all-party negotiations, aimed at finding ways out of the current political impasse in Maldives, have promised to meet again should be seen as a success in itself, however limited.

Given the inherent nature of the talks and the stiff positions that the nation’s polity had taken on issues that were at hand, to expect anything more was rather out of the question.

In the ordinary circumstances, the talks could have broken down on the rival positions taken by the Government side and the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) on substantive issues. That was not to be. Media reports indicate that the Government parties had a long list of woes that they wanted the MDP to address prior to major issues could be taken up.

Or, so it seemed.

Already, there was a six-point agenda, and after a lot of haggling, the MDP had agreed to stick to an agreed prioritisation for discussions. Included in the list of woes presented by the Government parties was a demand for MDP cadres not to stop Government party leaders from setting foot on various islands. The MDP could crow about the demand as a measure of its continuing popularity on those islands. Otherwise, it is a law and order problem, which the Government is expected to handle independent of the parties involved.

Then there was a demand on the MDP promising not to practice black magic on Opposition leaders and other opponents, real or perceived. News reports claimed that the police had recovered from Male’s Usfasgandu MDP camp site materials purported to have been used by practitioners of black magic. Marked photographs of some identifiable police officers, against whom it was feared black magic might have been practised at the camp site, were also recovered. The MDP has all along claimed to be a modern, no-nonsense party. It did not contest that such materials were recovered from the camp site.

It was, however, thought that the retreat and the Roadmap Talks were expected to address major policy issues, including the dire economic situation facing the nation. It is anybody’s guess when ‘black magic’ became a national policy, above the nation’s economy, for the Roadmap Talks to expend its time on such trivia. If parties felt strongly about them, other avenues should have been identified for discussing their concerns, without holding the Roadmap Talks hostage to sub-texts whose numbers are many and can be multiplied at will.

It is anybody’s guess why the Government should have also initiated the provocative police action at the Usfasgandu MDP site coinciding with the retreat talks. The court has intervened since, and stalled the process, but the damage has been done. The Government’s move even threatened the retreat talks. It also contributed to the MDP possibly re-visiting its strategy for the retreat talks. Clearly, the prioritisation outside of the six-point agenda for the Roadmap Talks had to undergo a change. The 30-point talks thus aimed at facilitating the Roadmap Talks thus occupied much of the talks time at the retreat.

MDP too not without blame

Yet, the MDP, going again by media reports, too is not without blame. At the talks, the MDP representatives seemed to be playing hide and seek with the Government side on the give-aways and take-aways from the negotiations. They wanted the Government parties to commit themselves to one of the four demands they had made before the MDP could commit itself to one of the 30 points discussed on normalising the street situation – without giving any hint as to what the MDP’s offer could be.

If the MDP strategists thought that they were smart, that is highly doubtful. At best, the retreat process displayed the MDP’s lack of seriousness to the negotiations process. Otherwise, it amounted to a continuing display of the party’s child-like behaviour on issues of serious national importance.

The MDP’s credibility continues to be at stake. In these weeks and months after the abrupt resignation of the party’s Mohammed Nasheed as the nation’s President on February 7, the world is not any more eating exclusively out of the hands of the MDP’s media machinery. It is watching the goings-on, revisiting the information on hand – once perceived as the truth – and is possibly exchanging notes. On a serious note, for instance, for the MDP to send out names of people which it knew would definitely be rejected by the Government for inclusion in the recast Commission for National Inquiry (CNI) on the ‘resignation episode’ was to make the Commonwealth initiative look a joke of sorts. The party was not exposing the Government to the international community. It was exposing itself – and, possibly the international interlocutors.

The MDP list included the name of a serving General in the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), the nation’s military. His presence on the CNI would prove the MDP right, the party had claimed. The Government, while rejecting the nomination, pointed out that the officer was a close relative of former President Nasheed. The MDP has not denied the Government’s statement. As may be recalled, through all these past months since Nasheed’s resignation, the party had said that serving senior officials of the MNDF had proposed a ‘counter-coup’ to the ‘coup’ that Nasheed claimed, after a time-lapse, as being responsible for his ‘forced resignation’. Whether any linkages could and would be made remains to be seen.

Continuing mistrust

The pre-expansion CNI has since come out with a time-line of events surrounding the resignation episode that it was tasked to probe and report on. The MDP having questioned the impartiality of the three-member probe as it stood, the latter seems to be recording its interim findings for the people to judge – before the expanded CNI took over. The party has since described the publication of the time-lines by the truncated CNI as a “blatant attempt to conceal the truth by pre-empting impartial enquiry”.

The publication is a reflection on the continuing mistrust among the stake-holders. This mistrust cannot be allowed to continue if the findings of the expanded CNI, with a former Singaporean Judge identified by the Commonwealth, and an MDP nominee accepted by the Government, have to be seen as being credible and conclusive. A split-verdict is a possibility, and any run-in during the run-up to the functioning of the expanded CNI would not make things easier, either for the impartiality of the probe or the credibility of its findings. The external member on the panel would be under pressure, too, he having to be seen as being impartial as much as he is impartial.

It is still not unlikely the expanded CNI might start off with reviewing the work already done by the probe, starting with the time-lines already publicised. It could only be a starting-point. Having had its way in having the CNI expanded with its nominee to boot, the MDP would have to swear by its report, whenever submitted. Independent of the protestations to the contrary, the party will have to answer queries on the time-lines set out by the pre-expanded CNI, particularly on the controversial questions on the even more controversial situations leading up to President Nasheed’s resignation.

For instance, there is one question on who ordered the pull-out of police men on duty at the site of competing political rallies on the night of February 6 – and, why. Reports at the time had indicated that a section of the policemen on midnight duty for weeks by then had protested to the unilateral withdrawal from a scene of prospective violence without suitable replacements being ordered in. They were among those who had taken to the streets the next day, along with political protestors, leading to the resignation, it was reported further.

Mixed bag for stake-holders

It’s at best a mixed bag for all stake-holders. Expelled MDP president Ibrahim Didi and vice-president AlhanFahmy have since taken the easy way out, by joining the Jumhoree Party of billionaire-politician Gasim Ibrahim, who had chaired the constitutional negotiations in 2007-08. The duo had threatened to challenge their expulsion by a nominated national council of the MDP in the court after the Election Commission refused to entertain their petition. The CNI time-line now indicates that Didi, then also a Minister, had chaired a Cabinet meeting when President Nasheed was in the MNDF Headquarters, talking to commanders and possible protestors, during the fateful hours preceding his resignation on February 7. Didi’s version, if any, to the CNI could thus be seen as being coloured. So could it contradict his pro-Nasheed protestations while in the party.

The MDP however has suffered a reversal since. The People’s Majlis, or Parliament has voted out the no-confidence motion moved by the party against Speaker Abdullah Shahid. Numbers did not add up, as two MDP parliamentarians voted against the party resolution and two others abstained. The party is in a quandary about initiating disciplinary action against them. It cannot afford to lose numbers. Nor could it allow individual violation of the three-line whip for MPs to become a greater issue of indiscipline that it may not be able to handle after a time. Already, the party has lost two parliamentary by-elections held since the resignation episode, bringing its strength to 31 in a House with 77 members.

The MDP cannot complain that the Government was inducing/encouraging defections from the party. It had adopted a similar tactic when President Nasheed was in office, with mixed results after failing to muster a majority in the parliamentary polls of 2009. Otherwise, too, the party needs to sit up and review its strategy in terms of targeting every democratic institution in the country as being inimical to the MDP – and by extension, to democracy as a concept. The MDP needs to look at the mirror and apply correctives if the international community on the one hand and discerning Maldivians, whose numbers are not small, have to take the party, and also its claims and allegations more seriously than at present.

Internal contradictions

The Government too cannot settle down to business as usual as if nothing had happened between December last and the present. The delayed processes pertaining to the CNI and the Roadmap Talks may have conferred post facto justification for delayed elections to the presidency than was perceived. That is not saying all. Political administration may be about processes and procedures. It is not so with politics, per se. There is a growing feeling that the Government parties are shying away from early polls, not sure of the MDP’s continuing popularity – and also owing to the internal contradictions within the ruling coalition and the internal problems facing some of the parties in power.

These internal contradictions will remain, whenever the presidential elections are held – now, or when due by July-November, 2013. Nor could the internal differences within some of these political parties, notably the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), founded by former President Maumoon Gayoom, be wished away at any time in the foreseeable future. The run-up to the presidential polls, whenever held, could be an occasion for furthering these differences, not cementing them. That being the case, the Government parties would need to come clean on their strategy for the future. Only based on such a strategy could they work back, on accommodating the MDP’s demand on advancing the presidential poll. Other arguments in this regard, including constitutional constraints, would fall flat on the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

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: Taking the political momentum forward

It did not receive as much media attention as the one by predecessor Mohamed Nasheed a fortnight earlier in the host nation, yet when President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik came calling at New Delhi he did make his points, loud and clear in corridors and quarters that mattered.

After a lull, the Indian media did wake up though not to the same extent. However, their Maldivian counterparts gave more and instant coverage for his than for President Nasheed’s visit. An indicator for this was the better media management for President Waheed than his team is credited with in comparison.

Coming as they did in quick succession, the two visits reflected the personalities and politics of the respective leaders, their relative strengths and weaknesses.

President Nasheed’s has been people-centric politics. It has often boiled down to cadre-centric protests. In New Delhi, he made one too many media appearances. His face and his charge of a mutiny that he said had forced him out of power were familiar themes in India. But his charge of collusion by Indian High Commissioner Dnyaneshwar Mulay as kind of a co-conspirator in the alleged coup was not. The issue, and not necessarily his accusations, thus caught the imagination.

There were not many takers, however. The more he repeated his allegations on TV cameras, the more he might have ended up losing. Reportedly, his feeble protestations to the contrary did not cut much ice, afterward.

President Waheed’s was not a storm-trooper’s entry into politics. Not many in the Maldives cared about his position as Vice-President under President Nasheed until he succeeded the latter on February 7. That too owed to the circumstances under which he became President. Under President Nasheed earlier, he seemed unsure about his role in the constitutional scheme. None bothered him with a clarification to his satisfaction. The situation only worsened after he had reportedly declined to resign as Vice-President when the rest of the Cabinet resigned en masse in mid-2010, purportedly over the ‘scorched earth policy’ being adopted by Parliament against the Executive.

As a member of the Nasheed Cabinet, Vice-President Waheed would want specific responsibilities assigned to him. President Nasheed’s camp, on the other hand, would argue that as per the American scheme that the Maldives had adopted in this respect, he was only the President-in-waiting, and eternally so. It was this camp however wanted Vice-President Waheed to quit when the rest of the Cabinet quit en masse, at the instance of President Nasheed in mid-2010. In this however, Vice-President Waheed did not see any shared responsibility, to quit.

Which position between the two ? that he should have been assigned specific ministerial/departmental responsibilities, or he was only the President-in-waiting, scored in the end, is still a debatable question for future arrangements of the kind. Thereby hangs a tale.

It would remain an unanswered query of contemporary Maldivian history if Vice-President Waheed’s resignation in 2010 would have upstaged the 2012 political crisis, or advanced it by as many months. On card in 2010 was the possibility of President Nasheed putting in his papers, handing over the reign to Parliament Speaker Abdullah Shahid. The latter would have been in office for only two months, time enough for ordering and supervising fresh presidential polls under the Constitution. The inability of President Nasheed to carry his deputy with him in 2010 meant that Parliament would not clear all his Cabinet nominees, when appointed, and the Supreme Court would endorse the views of Parliament in the matter, thus fuelling fresh crises, and reviving the existing ones too since his coming to power in November 2008. The rest, as they say, is history.

Questions would remain over what if the Cabinet had not resigned with President Nasheed, when he did on February 7, and decided to continue under President Waheed, instead. This generally would have been the case, barring a few possible replacements, in the ordinary scheme of the circumstances in which the Constitution-makers had construed presidential succession. Clearly, the Constitution-makers, most of whom are still active in politics and also parliamentarians to boot, had definitely not thought about the contingency of the kind that the nation witnessed in February. A solution that was aimed at addressing a constitutional impasse under a different set of circumstances applied to an entirely new set of events and developments. However, the succession itself could not be challenged as illegal or unconstitutional for this reason.

Between the two, and compared to any other politician in the country, President Nasheed is considered media-savvy. Yet, on his overseas trips, his team had failed to take his message to home audiences, concentrating mostly on viewers and opinion-makers in host-nations. In contrast, President Waheed’s office seemed to have established a good understanding of the local constituency of the Government coalition. An extension of this was a better understanding of the local media needs, and feeding them, too, from distant Delhi. It may be too early to assess the relative benefits to the respective camps in the Maldives, but having comparatively lesser media coverage in the host-nation seems to be better than more media, as the two leaders may have found out by now.

Going by media reports, while in India President Waheed told his hosts, starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, about his Government’s willingness to modify the terms of reference and expand the composition of the Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) into the ‘mutiny charge’ held out by President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).

With Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai having visited Male twice in three weeks in February-March for the purpose, any progress in the ‘Roadmap Talks’ that President Waheed had put in place would have to await the findings of the CNI, the Indian interlocutors were reportedly told further. Translated, it would mean that the MDP and the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) cannot complain about inevitable delays in the CNI coming out with its report, originally scheduled for end-May.

From the beginning, the Waheed Government had linked the MDP’s demand for early presidential polls at the end of the year to the findings of the CNI, which again was on President Nasheed’s agenda since quitting office. His camp had also argued that under the Constitution, presidential polls can happen not prior to July 2013. They are otherwise due by November 2013, when alone President Nasheed’s five-year elected term would have ended. Any advancement of elections prior to July 2013 would require a constitutional amendment, which was not possible under the current political climate.

The Government team is also said to have impressed upon the Indian leadership the inadvisability of President Waheed Manik and his Vice-President Waheed Deen quitting simultaneously, to hand over power to Speaker Shahid. Rather than facilitating early polls, as the MDP would want, it could trigger more problems than solving any. Political instability and consequent troubles for and during early presidential polls could only be one of them,  but the most critical one, too. Or, so was it argued, as the Waheed camp has been telling visiting international interlocutors of whatever hue and purpose.

With the Waheed Government offering to amend the NIC mandate in ways that would satisfy the MDP and the CMAG, and also offering to include mutually-acceptable nominees of President Nasheed on the probe team, a clearer situation could emerge only after the report becames available, hopefully around end-July. Whether the CNI would require more time would be known only after reconstituted probe revisits the work already done. On that would also hinge the Government’s position on the MDP’s demand for presidential polls before year-end. How the MDP would balance its two demands remains to be known. So would be the choice of the party’s nominees on the CNI, the Government not being comfortable with the aggressive politics of some already named but rejected with equal speed.

The CMAG has however clarified that the ‘qualifications’ like past political linkages and other credentials that the Government expects in the MDP nominees should be applicable to all members of the CNI. As is known some members of the CNI, all named by the Government, have been identified with some of the ruling parties, particularly the PPM. Simultaneously, however, there seems to have been some agreement on accepting the All-Party Talks convenor Ahmed Mujthaba as the new chair of the CNI as the incumbent would be away on Haj pilgrimage. The Government has also conceded the CMAG demand for expanding the CNI to give it a non-partisan appeal, by including in it an expert from Singapore.

Doubts however remain in Government circles as to the political outcome of the exercise. On the one hand, the CMAG is seen as reflecting the sentiments andemands of the Nasheed camp. Yet, there is no guarantee that whatever was acceptable to the CMAG as the findings of the CNI would be readily acceptable to the other camp, too. More importantly and immediately, there are doubts about the possibility of the CNI process being derailed owing to internal differences that could be expected at every turn, given the politicised composition of the probe team. How this would reflect in the working of the Roadmap Talks also remain to be seen. However, there are no short-cuts to give the CNI a non-partisan outlook. Whatever charges that the Government parties could level against the MDP, the latter could and would return in a greater measure ? given in particular that the Nasheed leadership is seen as the aggrieved party in the whole episode.

In between, major partners in the Waheed Government are also saddled with internal problems of their own. Among them is former President MaummonGayoom’s second-find in the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), floated after he had split the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP) that he had founded under the new Constitution. That came with the introduction of multi-party, multi-candidate presidential polls of 2008. As incumbent, President Gayoom lost it in the second, run-off round, after leading substantially in the first. Today, with his walking away from the DRP to found the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), the latter is yet to hold organisational elections, to satisfy the rules under the Election Commission.

It is easier said than done, as there are at least three identifiable groups vying for the top slot. In the present-day context, he who is elected party chief could also aspire to become the PPM’s nominee for presidential polls ? for which separate primaries would however have to be held, under the party’s rules. Indications are that at least one or the other of the groups would stay away from presidential poll campaign if their leader is not named the PPM candidate. This inherent and initial weakening of the PPM’s electoral position can become a problem if the presidential polls move on to the second, run-off round, as is being anticipated.

The alternative could be to find a fourth candidate acceptable to the existing three, including President Gayoom, to varying degrees. President Waheed could fit the bill. If the hunt is for an ‘outside candidate’ acceptable to the PPM factions and supported by other partners in the Waheed Government, the net could widen in good time. If allowed to fester, this by itself could contribute to avoidable speculation, and consequent political instability. Given the inevitable circumstances of coalition politics in the country since the inception of the Third Republican Constitution of 2008, speculation of the nature could cause more problems not only for the present Government but also for a post-poll political leadership in the country.

Today, the MDP too is riven with dissensions. The Nasheed camp, dominating the national council, voted out elected party president Ibrahim Didi and his deputy Alhan Fahmy last fortnight. Didi contested his ouster in the Election Commission, which in its order indicated that it would not intervene in the matter, thus favouring the status quo on the ground. He has since declared his intention to move the Supreme Court. This could have consequences, both for and by the party. Anyway, the party split is complete. Given its long drawn-out open battles with the higher judiciary in the country, the Nasheed camp in particular cannot be expected to accept any court order not favouring its position. Otherwise, it could jeopardise the Nasheed camp’s political progression in the interim if the order were to go against it, and if they are called upon to create a new identity and popularise a new symbol, flag, etc.

A conclusive split in the MDP could mean that either of the factions would have to float a new party and conduct organisational elections in time for contesting the presidential polls. It could be a tall order for a new party. For the Nasheed camp, if it were at the receiving end, it could mean that organisational elections would have to take precedence over the current phase of party primaries, where President Nasheed is still the sole candidate. He is expected to win much more than the mandatory 10 per cent vote in a single-candidate primary, but the process will still have to be gone through.

For now, however, the Election Commission’s ruling may have helped revive the All-Party Roadmap talks, initiated at the instance of the visiting Indian Foreign Secretary RanjanMathai in March. Apart from other hiccups in its working, mostly based on reservations expressed by the MDP at the time, the last meeting on May 5 had to be abandoned after some non-MDP parties cited the party-split as reason enough for delaying the political negotiations until after a clearer picture emerged on that front. The talks are now scheduled for Monday, May 21, but how any order of the Supreme Court, or an interim order, could impact on the course will be known as and when the Didi camp moves the higher judiciary in this respect.

How, or how not to balance the internal exigencies of Government parties like the PPM and the forceful demands of the MDP, where Nasheed’s non-officious leadership has come under a cloud, are other factors that need to be counted in while debating any advancing of the presidential polls. On the one hand, parties would have to push through their organisational commitments under the law in time for the presidential polls, even if held only when it is otherwise due. On the other, they too would have to provide for exigencies, should the CNI finding cause a situation where the advancement of the poll became as much mandatory as politically inevitable.

The current political imbroglio has also triggered a national discourse of sorts on the role of multi-lateral agencies and organisations. The CMAG has been a hate-object for most parties in Government. In New Delhi, President Waheed clarified that he did not share the opinion of some of the Government parties that Maldives should quit the Commonwealth after the CMAG had repeatedly come down heavily on the Waheed Government on CNI-related issues, and the earlier pronouncements relating to the resignation of President Nasheed. However, Government party members who had moved a resolution for Maldives to quit the Commonwealth, remain unmoved. By keeping their resolution alive, whether they have linked it to future pronouncements of the CMAG too remains to be seen.

The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at Observer Research Foundation

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