Author: N SathiyaMoorthy

Comment: Commonwealth ultimatum sparks call for pull-out

With the People’s Majlis, or Parliament, confirming the nomination of Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Deen, an element of political continuity and consequent stability has been injected into the Maldivian polity for now.

Yet, the visiting Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG)’s ultimatum to the Government of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik to recast the National Inquiry Commission (NIC), probing MDP predecessor Mohammed Nasheed’s charges relating to power-transfer, has thrown up a counter-call from Government leaders for Maldives to pull out of the Commonwealth – thus taking the focus away somewhat from domestic politics.

In Parliament, over the confirmation vote, all but one member belonging to the 32-strong majority MDP group, boycotted the 77-member House. The House also cleared all 14 Cabinet members individually, after the Supreme Court had upheld the procedure followed by the Majlis when President Nasheed sent the list of ministerial team for confirmation after their en masse resignation in 2010. The MDP is considering action against errant member Shifag Mufeed, who violated the party’s three-line whip and also spoke against its known line on the ‘coup charge’ in Parliament.

Confirmation for Vice-President Deen takes the punch out of the MDP argument against the need for a constitutional amendment for facilitating early elections. In India recently, and elsewhere too, President Nasheed and his MDP aides had said that President Waheed’s resignation could lead to Speaker Abdulla Shahid taking over the reins for a mandatory two-month period, when fresh presidential polls had to be held under his care. Vice-President Deen’s confirmation now means that even if President Waheed were to quit, the Vice-President would take over his place, as he himself had done when President Nasheed quit on February 7.

For advancing presidential polls without amending the Constitution, both President Waheed and Vice-President Deen will have to quit simultaneously. President Nasheed was believed to have attempted a constitutional coup of the sort when his Cabinet quit en masse, but Vice-President Waheed, it was said, would not play the ball. However, Government coalition partners like the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP) have said that they were not against early polls, but favoured a full five-year term for the new President, and were against the nation spending money and time only to fill in the residual part of the current presidency, ending in November 2013. This would require a constitutional amendment.

Yet, the numbers don’t add up for a constitutional amendment of the kind. With two by-election losses after the February 7 power-transfer and now the walk-out from the party by a single member has reduced MDP’s Majlis’ strength to 31. Yet, it remains the ‘majority group’ against the DRP parliamentary group’s 32 after the latter split formally following the two by-elections. Rules mandate that for parliamentary recognition, a political party should have won at least one seat on its symbol. The Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), founded by former President Maumoon Gayoom after splitting away from the DRP, his original political-find, opened the account by winning the Thimarafushi seat in the April 14 by-election.

The PPM now has 17 members in the House, and Gayoom’s half-brother Abdulla Yammen has become the ‘minority group’ leader in the House, a position held by DRP’s Thasmeen Ali. The latter has 15 members. Even if the MDP and the DRP were to vote together, it would add up to only 46 votes in Parliament, and would fall woefully short of a two-thirds majority. Indications are that in the absence of a national consensus over a constitutional amendment, the DRP can be seen as siding with the MDP only at the cost of further erosion in its parliamentary strength.

The leadership of Thasmeen Ali, once President Gayoom’s running-mate in 2008 and later anointed by him as DRP president and presidential nominee for 2013, is said to be acutely aware of the possibilities of a further split, particularly of the cadres drifting towards the PPM than in favour of the MDP, where again internal trouble seemed brewing all over again.

Consternation of and with Commonwealth

Two greater issues however have since captured the nation’s imagination and attention. On return to the country after its first visit soon after the power-transfer, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) served a four-week ultimatum on the Waheed Government to recast the team probing President Nasheed’s coup-charge linked to the power-transfer, to make it more credible, or face more severe action. This only helped open up a national debate, with some Government party members, as if by cue, telling Parliament that Maldives should reconsider its membership of the Commonwealth.

Outside Parliament, President Waheed and some probe team members took different positions on recasting or expanding the commission’s membership, to meet stringent quality-control. President Waheed said that the team’s terms gave it powers to recast itself. Team members however said that they had a limited mandate, and had a May 31 deadline to meet. However, probe team’s leader has since clarified that it had inherent powers to seek external experts to assist it in the probe. Until the CMAG served the ultimatum, President Waheed and his Government had reiterated their request for Commonwealth to suggest experts for assisting the probe without compromising on the nation’s sovereignty. The CMAG has been silent on the request, since.

President Waheed sought to put a lid on the demand for Maldives quitting the Commonwealth, by declaring that it was not in the Government’s mind. However, former President Gayoom, whom the MDP says was the brain behind the ‘power-transfer conspiracy’ and the real power behind the Waheed Governent, has kept the pot boiling since. He said that the Commonwealth’s character has changed, from being supportive of smaller member-nations to become the power-base of the bigger ones. He has also pointed out that the Commonwealth was essentially a club of once-colonised nations whereas Maldives was not a colony, only a protectorate.

Despite President Waheed’s denial two ruling combine MPs have since presented a Bill to Parliament calling upon the Government to pull out of the Commonwealth. The members belong respectively to former President Gayoom’s PPM and Presidential Advisor Hassan Saeed’s DQP. Maldives’ Permanent Representative to the European Union, Ali Hussein Didi, was reported to have said that the situation in the country did not give the CMAG a clear mandate to place the Maldives on its agenda, as per the 2011 Perth summit. Yet, Maldives “will continue to extend “maximum level of cooperation”, Maldivian media reports quoted him as telling a monthly meeting of the EU on South Asia.

Ambassador Didi also criticised the CMAG for not responding to requests for assistance to the ‘coup inquiry’, and reiterated the Government’s current position that presidential polls would be conducted by July 2013, at the earliest, as per the constitutional provision. This, even as Ibrahim Didi, the MDP president, reportedly contested the former’s claims about his purported interpretation of the events of February 6-7, media reports said, while the party also contested the presentation before the EU that President Nasheed’s resignation owed to a ‘popular uprising’. On other issues, flowing from power-transfer, MDP’s Didi seemed to be at logger-heads with the Nasheed camp, nonetheless.

Roadmap talks, or internationalisation further?

In the normal course, the confirmation of the Vice-President should have introduced a greater element of continuity and consequent political stability. Yet, the Commonwealth ultimatum, which runs out in another two weeks, has re-written and re-focused the script, indicating that at least a section of the international community does not want a status quo mind-set in Male to forget past commitments on a credible probe and early presidential polls. The nation’s polity since seems to have become aware of the drift and the impending consequences, which none of them may be in a position to control, after a point.

Pressured from different sides, the government parties and the MDP have since met across the table, to revive the all-party roadmap talks. Participants said they had authorised convenor Ahmed Mujthaba alone to talk to the media, but also indicated that the talks were productive in seeking to prioritise the agreed agenda, worked out at the instance of visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai. They are meeting again on May 5, and progress on the poll-date is also expected in time.

An international civil servant under the UN before returning home to enter pro-democracy politics, President Waheed seems aware of the limitations of domestic protests and protestations, and the compulsions caused by the international community. Committing to inject credibility into the power-transfer probe, the Government reportedly sought international expertise from both the Commonwealth and the UN, expecting possibly the former to respond favourably earlier than the latter. At the time, the government also said that it had asked nations like Malaysia and India to suggest a team of experts for the purpose.

At present, Belgian mediation expert Pierre-Yves Monette is in Maldives, at the instance of the UNDP and on the request of All-Party convenor Mujthaba. Local media reports indicated that he had worked with the Maldivian stake-holders and brought them back to the Roadmap talks. The MDP in particular reportedly had reservations to Monette’s presence at the earlier round of talks, but not anymore. Yet, his engagement is confined to the Roadmap talks, and not the ‘coup probe’. The CMAG’s purported conditions now for sending in a list of experts for the Maldivian government/probe commission to choose from, seem to have thrown up a situation where the request for the UN to help out in the matter, if honoured, could have deeper consequences than Maldives can stomach, some sections in the country seem to feel.

In this regard, recent examples involving neighbouring Sri Lanka and other member-nations are cited as example of excessive and extraneous UN intervention. For India, it means that any reference of the Maldivian case to the UN Security Council could imply that the incumbent government in Male would have more immediate use for China. New Delhi could not complain. Conversely, as the Sri Lankan and Syrian precedents have shown in recent months, by taking the Maldivian case away from the Security Council and to other UN portals such as UNHRC, where veto-power does not apply, the ‘pro-democracy’ West can have a decisive say, but the stake-holders in Maldives, independent of their present predicament, may have none.

The Maldivian stake-holders seem to understand it, too – for, any UN engagement of any kind in recent times has signalled not an early end to what essentially is a domestic problem, often of egos and perceptions, at times in the garb of principles and policies, if at all. For the Government, the internationalisation of the question of early elections (and, not the ‘power-transfer’ issue, where alone UN expertise has been sought) could lead to a global discourse, where extraneous global concerns like religious radicalism and strategic location of Maldives could dictate the mind-set and dominate the proceedings. Issues such as parliamentary confirmation for the Vice-President and the Cabinet, the arguments favouring the power-transfer probe team and elections only when they are scheduled would then be of little consequence.

For the MDP, not only could early elections become worse than a distant possibility but also the party’s nationalist credentials and its democratic sheet-anchor could come under question. If nothing else, sympathy that the party and President Nasheed claims to have retaken following the power-transfer after it was believed to have lost it to the Nasheed Government’s economic policies and political approach to the Opposition of the day may become suspect all over again. Not just MDP, but even the very concept of ‘democracy’ may then be in question in the country, which ushered in the processes and also peaceful power-transfer through multi-party elections as far back as 2008, and long before the ‘Arab Spring’, among others.

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: Institution building in the Maldives

Former President Mohammed Nasheed was on a six-day-long visit to India, pressing his case for early elections and reiterating his position on the need for reforming the nation’s ‘independent institutions’.

During his three years in office, cut short from the mandated five following his sudden resignation on February 7, and later, too, he has laid a great stress on the need for reforming the Judiciary, Election Commission, Human Rights Commission and also the legislative aspect of the People’s Majlis or Parliament.

His detractors, now in power, are using the same arguments of his to try and deny him the early presidential polls that Nasheed and his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) have been demanding since his resignation. President Waheed Hassan and his multi-party coalition Government say that they needed to ’empower’, not ‘reform’ independent institutions, and enact laws to check against ‘Executive interference’ as happened under the Nasheed regime.

The MDP has never hidden its reservations about working with judges and members of independent commissions, once appointed by then entrenched President Maumoon Gayoom. It wanted them removed, and critics say that the party and the Nasheed government ‘invented’ reasons to paint the entire lot of government employees black. Critics also say that the MDP perception was based on the anti-Gayoom mood of the nation’s people and voters when Nasheed won the presidential polls, again as a part of an informal coalition ahead of the second, run-off round in October 2008. The party refused to acknowledge that three years down the line and less than two years to presidential polls, Nasheed, not Gayoom, would be the electoral issue and sought to keep the electoral focus still on the latter.

There is some truth in the political argument of both sides. There is however a need to revisit the MDP-offered specifics dispassionately, for the nation to arrive at a consensus on capacity-building at all levels of governance. It can start at the top-most, where in the absence of established norms and democratic precedents, whims of every kind, have passed for executive discretion. Given that the President has always been chosen in a direct election, whether multi-party or not, there was greater respect for the institution.

This translated into excessive loyalty for the person of the President, and a blind adherence to the policies initiated in his name. This did not find much change under the MDP, too. Familiarity with the forgettable past led to status quoism, though of a different kind, and breaching the comfort zone became difficult after a point.

Appealing to the youth

In their time, both President Gayoom and President Nasheed were in their early 40s when they assumed office. They appealed to the youth of the day, addressed their immediate concerns and quenched their aspirations, however limited their efforts were by Maldivian circumstances and economy. They sounded genuine and were readily accepted as the man for the time.

In his early days as President, Gayoom focussed on education and employment, the former by opening schools in atolls and islands across the country and the latter by promoting resort tourism, an imaginative economic initiative, taking Maldives beyond the limitations imposed by fishing on both counts. All of these efforts stood in the name of Gayoom’s predecessor, the late Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, who did not stay on in power for long. Yet, to President Gayoom should go the twin-credits of not discontinuing the good work done by his predecessor, a common trait otherwise across South Asia, and also building on the same.

Ironically, educational opportunities, though only up to the Cambridge A-Level, also meant that Maldivian youth would not be satisfied with the status or lack of it attaching to resort jobs. The salaries were also low compared to what was on offer in the government. Lest they should go astray in a nation that was already concerned about increasing incidence of drug-addition in the lower age-groups, and lest he too should lose the emerging rank of youthful voters ahead of the first multi-party presidential polls of 2008, the Gayoom leadership appointed more government employees than may have been justified, adding up to 10 per cent of the nation’s 350,000 population.

The trend has continued in a way, though the Nasheed presidency scrapped 20 per cent of all Government jobs through a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS), as a part of the IMF-guided economic reforms, but created more for political appointees, though elections after intervening ad hocism. The Gayoom leadership could not grow with its beneficiaries in terms of thinking for the new generation of youth, born to governmental largesse or social benefit that was new and welcome to an earlier one.

The inevitable stagnation attaching to entrenched leaderships, whose communication with the governed often gets stifled owing to a personality-driven administration and the inevitable sycophancy in the existing climate proved to be the electoral bane of President Gayoom. The cry for human rights and multi-party democracy were all products of a new generation approach to issues in a new era where global communication and exposure had become relatively easy and equally resolvant.

The successor-government has since alleged that the Nasheed administration created a multiplicity of government corporations and a plethora of elected provincial councillors, under a privatisation and decentralisation scheme. The former owed to IMF reforms, and the latter was flagged as an achievement of democracy and constitutional reforms. The elected councillors took the place of island-councillors, nominated in President Gayoom’s time.

Government officials now claim that the new scheme provided for salaries for elected members and board members of public corporation, denting the exchequer much more than what the job and salary-cuts saved. In President Gayoom’s time, as some recall, even parliamentarians held only a part-time job, their sources of income coming either from the government jobs they held, or the businesses they were associated with.

The 20 percent cut in salaries and jobs introduced by the Nasheed presidency also meant that the government was at logger-heads with the constitutionally-mandated Civil Services Commission (CSC). Creation of nominated provincial and island councillors ahead of election to these bodies in March 2011, replacing those nominated by President Gayoom under an atolls-based scheme instead, critics argued, was aimed at circumventing the existing processes, including the role of the CSC in Government recruitments, appointments and transfers. Under the nominated scheme, followed by elections later, the Nasheed leadership, it was argued, had brought in MDP cadres in the place of Gayoom loyalists at all levels.

In a way, it was a clash of interest between the entrenched Gayoom-appointees and the new-found power at the hands of youthful MDP cadres that was said to be at the bottom of the crises that successively rocked the Nasheed Government. When a promotion-level appointment of Deputy Ministers in individual departments under the earlier dispensation was ‘compromised’ through political nominations under the Nasheed leadership, non-partisan observers in Maldives claimed that the Government and its Ministers, inexperienced and unexposed as many of them were, might not have been able to extract the right inputs and advice from the permanent civil service as would have been the case otherwise.

Otherwise, too, the Nasheed leadership, in a hurry to fast-track reforms much of which was required, rather than learning to work with and within the system, and on it, chose to work against the system. Near-wholesale change of officials at all levels as was being hinted was not on, but that was what the proposed course ended up being seen as. Worse still, unbiased observers in Maldives saw the replacement of Gayoom loyalists, whose other qualification at the lower-levels of islands-administration in particular could not be questioned, being replaced by MDP foot-soldiers. The legitimisation of the process through the decentralisation scheme in particular did not go down well. With the result, even the well-meaning measures of the Nasheed Government on governance reforms, by addressing specific cases involving top people in various institutions, came to be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Capacity-building in judiciary

The story was no different in the case of the judiciary. In a country where quality education means and stops with the A-Level, equivalent to Plus-Two in India, there could not have been many with legal qualification and background to prefer the Bench to the bar. At one stage during the Executive-Judiciary deadlock in 2010, it was pointed out that of the 170-plus judges across the country, only 30 or so had undergone legal education in the modern sense. The rest, the government of the day merrily argued, had not passed even the eighth grade in some cases. The Gayoom camp, which had to accept responsibility, would point out that many of them were well-versed in the Shariat. Thereby hangs a tale, still.

In a way, no one contests that the provocation for the police protests – though there are different opinions about calling it a coup or mutiny – flowed from the arrest of Criminal Court Chief Judge, Abdulla Mohamed. The armed forces, namely the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), arrested him on January 16, after the police chief wrote to the latter that the judge was a threat to national security. Critics argue that there was a flaw in institutional responsibilities on this count, despite the Gayoom government too having initiated action against the said judge. At present Presidential Advisor, Dr Hassan Saeed, as Attorney-General under the Gayoom dispensation had initiated action, but nothing moved beyond a point, for a variety of reasons, not all of them political.

The question remains if the MNDF should have been called into service to handle the case. That was also the contention of both the protesting police men and soldiers, whose numbers however were fewer than that of the former. The former feared lack of trust in the police and the latter said the MNDF was being misused for duties it was not mandated or equipped to handle. This was the case when President Nasheed used the MNDF to arrest two leading opposition leaders on corruption charges, and more importantly to shut down the Supreme Court for a day, in mid-2010.

In the Abdulla case, however, the Nasheed camp is right in arguing that even the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) had upheld his government’s contention for the judge not to discharge judicial duties. Incidentally, both the High Court and Supreme Court had stayed the proceedings against the said judge, as empowered under the law.

There is a clash of concepts between the status quo system and the modern thoughts of the Nasheed leadership, on all fronts. In the judiciary, the reformists argued that the status quo legal and judicial systems, which at times sounded arbitrary in the absence of codified laws that applied to all and derived from one another, was refusing to give place to common law practices, as understood elsewhere.

The confusion also derived from the cross-cultural integration that the Islamic nation had achieved to a substantial level in other walks, but not fully in some others. In a nation dependent on resort tourism and imported goods and services for sustaining its economy and society, the dichotomy of free repatriation of the dollar earned by the former and the absence of internationally-accepted banking laws made things difficult for global players. It may have also owed to the absence of laws governing repatriation and a role for the Maldivian authorities to intervene in the processes over the past three decades and more.

The stagnation was striking, independent of the absence of attractive scope of mega-investments outside of tourism industry. Given the inherent limitations imposed by Maldives’ geographical location, human resource, and a local market for goods and services that would interest big-time investors from South Asia and elsewhere, credit facility for local investors is a pragmatic route in the local context.

The beneficiary has been the local creditor and the loser, international banks, including India’s SBI. In the absence of enforceable legislation, they were often left to be cautious than overwhelming with extending credit facilities, after an initial spurt.

During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bilateral visit to Male in November 2011, when he participated in the SAARC Summit at southern Addu, the two sides signed an agreement for India to help Maldives in improving its banking laws and practices. There is a need for simultaneous reforms of laws relating to transfer of property and crimes of credit default, if international banks are to evince an interest in supporting Maldivian economy.

Reforms on the legal front in Maldives often boils down to marrying common law practices with the Shariat. No other country has achieved satisfactory results on this score, particularly in the immediate South Asian neighbourhood than India. The evolved Indian scheme ensures protection under theShariat as far as the Muslim personal law goes. It covers marriage and divorce, inheritance and the like. More importantly, the Indian scheme have imbibed the Shariat practices in its laws and judicial pronouncements, so much so lawyers and judges in India, educated and trained under the common law scheme, practice the same without they having to study these laws in madrasas or confining their knowledge and expertise only to the Shariat.

Even while criticising the nation’s judiciary while in power, the MDP and President Nasheed did acknowledge the amended provisions of the Judges Act to equip and educate the judiciary in the country on the reforms that need to be undertaken, over a seven-year period. The unstated understanding is that the judges who had not equipped them under the new scheme would have to go at the end of seven years. Two years have already passed by, but the Nasheed Government was not known to have taken any serious step to reform the judiciary, though updating/modernising the judiciary would have been a better and more acceptable term. Capacity-building is the name of the game in modern parlance. The Nasheed government could not be blamed for not trying in approaching the UN agencies and India, among others, for helping with capacity-building in judiciary and other areas of administration, but the follow-up was lacking.

The other problem pertaining to the judiciary, as pointed out the MDP since Nasheed assumed the presidency in 2008, relates to the life-long tenure for judges. For a nation that had borrowed the US model of executive presidency without the attendant checks-and-balances, the Maldivian scheme suffers from internal contradiction that are natural to adapting alien models without thought. The checks-and balances scheme took roots in the US for historic reasons. The US also takes pride in protecting the individual accountability and collective responsibility of institutions. Neither this, nor the ‘French model’ of shared powers between the directly-elected President and a Prime Minister as under the Westminster scheme, for instance, could have been transplanted into another system, without nation-wide acknowledgement and discourse, and a commitment flowing from it.

In the Maldivian context, the executive presidency from the Gayoom era was accompanied by live-tenure for judges, without self-accountability on the latter’s part. Under the scheme, the legislature too being a tool of the executive did not protest violations or protect the common man’s interests. The MDP in general and President Nasheed in particular wanted this situation changed. What transpired however was a government in a hurry wanting to change everything overnight. With the Opposition-controlled Parliament in no mood to amend the laws to grant a fixed or age-barred tenure for the judges, the Nasheed Government started painting all appointees of the Gayoom administration in black, leaving no room for shades of grey.

This also applied to members of other independent institutions, including the Election Commission, Judicial Services Commission, Civil Services Commission and the Human Rights Commission. In a more recent response to a legislative proposal to amend Article 53 of the Civil Services Act, which stipulates that civil servants wanting to contest elections should quit their post six months in advance, Mohamed Fahmy Hassan, CSC president, said that professionalism of the civil service can be maintained only of if the civil service is established as a non-political establishment. What needs to be achieved is a measure of legislative changes, which do not always go in favour of the Government of the day, particularly when it lacked parliamentary majority.

The MDP government was in a hurry to do too many things in too short a time, and seen as having revamped the system in time for their second presidential poll under the multi-party scheme. In the process, they bit more than they could have chewed.

Anti-incumbency & coalition from start

All sections of the nation’s polity should share the blame for writing the Constitution with an individual, and not institutions, in mind. Through the debates of the Constituent Assembly (2007-08), the unacknowledged assumption was President Gayoom would either thwart the effort or ensure his electoral victory even under a multi-party system. His Government in a way fed such apprehensions on the side of the multi-party Opposition. The Gayoom camp favoured the Westminster system of government. As the polling pattern in 2008 proved, he would have continued in office under the scheme, he having polled 40 per cent of the popular vote in the first round of presidential elections. Against this, Nasheed polled only 25 per cent with two other Opposition candidates, Hassan Saeed and Gasim Ibrahim obtaining 17 and 15 per cent of the votes, respectively. Anticipating some game-plan up President Gayoom’s sleeve, and also understanding the awaiting complexity, the Opposition parties preferred the Executive Presidency through direct elections and 50-per cent-plus share of the popular vote for the winner.

Written into the script even at the time was the inevitability of an anti-Gayoom candidate pooling the votes of other runners-up in the second round, if he had tobe elected President. Deals were struck by parties behind the back of the people, who in turn were excited about the prospects of multi-party democracy. The 40-per cent youth population was overwhelmed by vote for 18-year-olds. Nasheed’s victory thus implied a contract for the winner to accommodate the runners-up in the Government and in the parliamentary elections under the new constitutional scheme. When that part of the deal was not kept, the inherent coalition, inevitable to the Maldivian scheme of the time, broke. It also implied that anti-incumbency of the kind that beleaguered President Gayoom in electoral terms after multi-party democracy became possible, would haunt his successor, too. Or, with the electoral focus turning towards the new President, other parties would ‘gang up’, as they did against President Gayoom, if they felt being let up the garden path or that the mood of the voter had changed, since.

Elsewhere, particularly in directly-elected executive governments, coalitions of the non-incumbent/anti-incumbent kind are often represented in terms of ‘interest groups’ within an umbrella organisation of a single political party. In such instances as post-independence India or Sri Lanka in the immediate neighbourhood, such umbrella organisations had splintered and fractured with passage of time, to form other political parties, representing individual interest groups, within which commonality could suffer further erosion under specific circumstances. In democratic Maldives, such ‘interest groups’ have had ready representation in different political parties even at the commencement of the process.

Barring the main player, the President of the nation and the party that he led and/or represented, the rest of them all have remained constant. There are visible signs of some of the political parties weakening and others strengthening themselves at the cost of the rest. A clearer picture will take time to emerge, with each election for the presidency, Parliament and local councils, throwing up different permutations and combinations, in the interim. All this would go on to prove that democracy is a dynamic process, eternally changing and reshaping itself.

Maldives and Maldivians, starting with their divided polity, have to accept that there is no constancy or permanency in democracy after a point, and that all would have to accept this reality and be prepared to make sacrifices.

At present, as in the pre-democracy past, the leadership of various political parties, and by extension, the government also remains Male-centric, and thus represents the urban elite. It could not have been different in the short span, though early signs of the Maldivian polity moving away from urban Male for leadership have become visible in the democracy years. As has been happening in older democracies elsewhere in the Third World, particularly in the rest of South Asia, the trickle-down effect of democracy would swarm not only the population in terms of socio-economic benefits but would also throw up a new class of rural elite, and non-elite among the political party, and consequently government leadership in due course.

The Maldives has to prepare itself to accept this reality. So should Maldivians be prepared for the same. Yet, given the urban-islands divide – an urban-rural divide, elsewhere – and the reality of urban population centres having a disproportionately high share of the votes, the transition and consequent transformation could be more painful than elsewhere, and more than what the young democracy has been subjected to, already.

Institution-building, as democratic traditions, is time-consuming. Once built, it would be left to the practitioners of the scheme, politicians and bureaucrats in this case, to protect what they have given themselves and the nation. In a contemporary history whose current life is only three years or even less, institution-building in Maldives could not be, and should not be, compared to those in older and thus more matured democracies. The nation will also have to marry the traditions learnt from elsewhere with the cultural and civilizational ethos of a proud people, whose geographical insulation in this communications era needs to be balanced, carefully and patiently.

It is not that it could not be achieved, but the tweaking and tempering takes time, at times running to several years. After all, Rome was not built in a day, nor can Maldivian democracy and democratic institutions be, particularly when they have been inherited from another scheme of governance that were in force in another era even in the global context, and cannot be, and should not be wished away, either.

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: Reconciling to reconciliation

With the People’s Majlis, or Parliament, commencing its delayed inaugural session for the current year with the customary address by President Mohammed Waheed Hassan, even if in the midst of disturbances caused by the majority Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), the stage may have been set now for political reconciliation in Maldives.

If nothing else, neither can the MDP be seen as continuing to stall parliamentary proceedings without increasing international opprobrium nor can the Government parties argue that in the absence of peace in Parliament, they could not be expected to discuss and vote on advancing presidential polls, as promised.

Addressing Parliament, President Waheed declared his intention to facilitate early elections, as promised to India and the rest of the international community after MDP predecessor Mohammed Nasheedpost facto claimed that a ‘mutiny’ by a section of the armed forces and police was the chief cause for his widely-telecast resignation on February 7.

On another note of concern to the MDP, both while in office and otherwise, he spoke about plans to “empower” the independence of institutions like the Majlis and the country’s judiciary by not “interfering” with their work. In his days in office and outside, President Nasheed and his MDP colleagues had often talked about ‘reforming’ the judiciary and other independent institutions, translating in effect into what the Opposition called ‘interference’.

“This is the time for all of us to work together in one spirit, the time to bring political differences to the discussion table in order to formulate solutions. According to the Constitution, the earliest date for a presidential election is July 2013. If a presidential election is required at an earlier date, changes need to be made to the Constitution. I will do everything in my power to bring together all the political leaders, to hold discussions on the matter,” President Waheed said in his inaugural address, when Parliament reconvened on Monday, March 19, after MDP members inside the Chamber and street-protesters had stalled the originally scheduled sitting on March 1 in an unprecedented manner.

Independent of the street-protests that have continued until after the security forces had swung into action a day after the presidential address and removed an ‘MDP camp’, in what is argued to be the land allotted to the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), in turn leading to a court case, there now seems to be some scope for reconciliation in regard to the continuing political deadlock.

While arguing the MDP’s case on substantive issues, a Commonwealth ministerial team, on its second visit to the country since Nasheed quit office, did not take kindly to his party members disrupting parliamentary proceedings. Then as now, the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) too has decried the MDP behaviour inside Parliament, both on March 1 and 19.

Voices against violence

From within the MDP, there have been increasing voices against street-violence by party cadres, and also on the need for the party to return to the negotiations table for taking its agenda forward. Party president and former president Ibrahim Didi was among the first to criticise cadre-violence, targeting public and private property. Included in the list in recent days was the building housing the media establishment of former opposition Jumhooree Party founder and one-time Finance Minister Gasim Ibrahim, who in turn is among the richest in the country.

Sooner than later, the MDP will be called upon to test President Waheed’s constantly-reiterated commitment to early polls, by participating in the all-party talks, initiated at the latter’s instance weeks ago. Two other political parties, namely the DRP and the PPM, both founded by Nasheed’s predecessor Maumoon Gayoom, with he himself now being associated only with the latter, had decided to stay away from the talks after the MDP did so in the past. They too have now to be talked into returning to the negotiations table, if the reconciliation process has to go anywhere. They may want guarantees that the MDP would stick to the negotiations table until a clear picture emerged on the future course.

DRP leader Thasmeen Ali however has since reiterated his party’s original commitment to facilitate early presidential polls, pointing out however that the MDP would have to let Parliament function for that to happen. From within the MDP, too, a few voices are being heard about the need for the party’s participation in the all-party talks, if only for it to take the logical next step to early polls, and also let Parliament function normally — again, with the same end in mind.

Chicken-and-egg question

It is a chicken-and-egg question when it comes to finalising the date for the presidential polls. The MDP wants the Government to announce the poll-date first whereas the Government parties want the procedural issues in this regard addressed before they could take the logical next step. Or, that is the argument. The MDP is also unclear if they want a tentative date and a commitment to the effect from the Government — or, would want a formal notification before they could re-join the reconciliation process. The latter could prove problematic as the Election Commission — and by reverse extension, the Government — is not authorised to do so in the absence of a constitutional amendment.

Under the Third Republican Constitution of 2008, once-in-five-year presidential polls, now due in November 2013, could be conducted within three months of the due date. Any advancement, by implication, has to be facilitated by a constitutional amendment carrying two-thirds majority in the Majlis — and may require judicial concurrence, if contested. Though being the majority party in Parliament, the MDP too falls woefully short of the magic number. While the party was able to push its position from being the second largest group in the House after the parliamentary polls in 2009 to the top slot, the post-resignation period has not provided any comfort in pushing the numbers further up.

No time to lose

The MDP distanced itself from the negotiations process when the all-party meeting was scheduled to discuss the prioritisation of items in the outline agenda that had been mutually agreed upon. Apart from setting the priority list for the talks from the draft agenda, the all-party meeting will have to go into substantive issues falling under each of the subject-heads. The MDP wants the entire process fast-tracked so as to decide on the poll date first. The Government parties are keen also to discuss institutional reforms, as some of them are concerned about the existing estrangement between the security forces and sections of the national polity, which could spell doom, before, during and after the polls, if a meaningful reconciliation effort is not put in place and executed with elan.

Time is the essence for all concerned. Given their internal contradictions, the Government parties are sure to find mutual accommodation among themselves a tougher proposition than they may have bargained for. The younger elements in many of these parties may not have the same regard from Gayoom as the earlier generation, with the result, they may contest whatever compromise that might be arrived at on specific issues where his counsel could otherwise prevail.

In its turn, the MDP faces the danger of the focus of its current protests and political position slipping away, with extraneous factors coming to dominate the inner-party discourse. The Nasheed leadership has been able to streamline stray yet powerful voices within the party that has talked freely against street-violence and for the MDP to re-join the political process. Senior party leaders who have spoken on such issues have since been quick to point out that it was only a part of the internal mechanisms, and on all issues, including the continuance of street-protests without violence, they were with the leadership.

As the MDP leadership may have seen for itself already, the continuing non-cooperation with the Government on the commitments that the latter has made in relation to restoration of normalcy, and more importantly, early presidential polls, has not gone down well with friends of the party elsewhere and non-cadre sympathisers nearer home. The latter in particular are already feeling the pinch of street-protests interfering with the peaceful daily life that they had been used to — with financial consequences to individuals, too.

Islamic faith, national spirit

While referring to the economy, tourism and international relations, President Waheed in his parliamentary speech also mentioned Islam. “Being a 100 per cent Muslim nation, Maldives does not offer opportunities for the practice of other religions within the country,” he said. “The Government will work to revive the spirit and strengthen the principles of Islamic faith among the people.”

However, President Waheed followed this up with a more direct reference to nationalism, per se. Said he in this regard: “Special efforts will be made to strengthen national spirit and togetherness of Maldivians. Activities to understand our history, culture and nationality will be conducted.” This reference is less perfunctory than it may sound, though the more direct mention of Islam may or may not be as purposeful as it too may read.

As may be recalled, throughout the campaign for the introduction of multi-party democracy in Maldives, the MDP in the years before 2008 had constantly referred to what it propagated as President Gayoom’s efforts at Islamisation of Maldives – an idea that caught the imagination of the pro-Nasheed West in the post-9/11 era in particular. All efforts at removing President Nasheed throughout last year without the required two-thirds majority in the Majlis for his possible impeachment culminated not in any political protest but in the formation of a ‘December 23 Coalition’ by religious NGOs, to protect Islam in Nasheed’s Maldives, with the political opposition seeing in it a chance to evolve a national movement of sorts.

In the days and weeks after President Nasheed’s exit, President Waheed has been constantly and continuously referring to Islam in all his public appearances. While it makes sense in the larger context, his allies in Government have been careful not to make such references and thus possibly provide political space for religious groups outside the existing electoral spectrum. If it signals a fracture in electoral thinking between President Waheed and his political allies remains to be seen. Yet, in the context of the party’s calls for early polls, the MDP too has been silent on this score, after having chided and criticised the rest on what it called ‘fundamentalist religious’ counts during the run-up to the December 23 protest and before – but not afterward.

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: Consensus the only way forward

The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has not served its cause for early polls nor has it covered its democratic credentials with glory when it stalled Male and stopped President Mohammed Waheed Hassan from delivering the customary annual address to Parliament on Friday, March 1.

For their part, the government parties, while commendable as their conduct was in not allowing themselves to be provoked both inside and outside parliament on the occasion, seem to have backtracked on the spirit of the India-facilitated roadmap consensus document on restoration by being vague on early polls to the presidency than when due in November 2013.

The alternative to consensus is utter chaos that Maldives now or ever could ill-afford. That was also the spirit of pragmatism that attended on the Indian concerns for encouraging the roadmap document and subsequent roadmap discussions. Political stability being the touchstone for progress of democracy in any community or country — and Maldives is a combination of both than in most – the roadmap provided for this and more. Or, else, the rest of the world with their vast democratic experience would not have endorsed the Indian initiative to recognise the alternate government of President Waheed after President Nasheed had announced a vacancy through a much-televised resignation, as provided for in the nation’s constitution. Both the US and China were in the list though the latter cannot be called democratic by any stretch of imagination.

Having encouraged defections in a 77-member parliament where it did not have the numbers after the 2009 elections, the MDP cannot complain about democracy-deficiency in the rest of the polity – greater or lesser be its concerns. Having taken to the streets and encouraging individual policemen and MNDF soldiers to join forces for demanding President Nasheed’s exit as numbers would not help his impeachment through a two-thirds vote in Parliament, the present ruling combine cannot blame the MDP for adopting similar tactics to drive home its demand. The consequent deadlock cannot be allowed to hold the nation to eternal ransom, which it will be if parliament does not meet in cooler climes to address irritants and issues which in fact had facilitated democracy-deficit in the first place.

Singing a different tune

The solution lies in between. The ruling parties of the day need to acknowledge that functional democracy is not possible without a parliamentary majority even with an Executive President at the head. The MDP in turn has to acknowledge that with only 34 memb4ers, up from the post-poll 27 but excluding the one disqualified by the Supreme Court after President Nasheed’s exit, it is still short of an absolute majority. At the bottom of the MDP’s problems, both parliamentary and political, while President Nasheed was in office was its failed strategy for the parliamentary elections. The party compromised healthy parliamentary precedents that it should have set, and encouraged questionable prosperity in individual members, which did cause eyebrows to rise when they decided to support the Nasheed Government in the past.

President Waheed’s government cannot continue with the perceived pitfalls from his predecessor’s time and expect to give a government different from that of President Nasheed, and hope to win over the masses (read: voters) ahead of the presidential polls. Having argued that all economic and fiscal measures of the Government would require a parliamentary approval when the MDP Government was in a minority, the anti-MDP group that now backs President Waheed cannot sing a different tune if and when they want to change what they call the ‘faulty economic policies’ of the predecessor, even if only to win over the masses.

The less said about the complexities attending on early elections the better. Having faulted constitutional institutions other than that of the Executive, represented exclusively by President Nasheed and his Cabinet, which in turn was tied down to parliamentary endorsement based on majorities, the MDP now cannot rush the nation into elections, and then complain all over again, if candidate Nasheed were to return to power once more. The alternative to working with the existing institutions at the time would be outright autocracy. The party says it shuns autocracy, and is not tired of referring to Nasheed’s predecessor, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, as one – even while the reference otherwise are to people who had once served the latter and have since found a place in President Waheed’s team.

Burden, not a boon?

The MDP needs to cool tempers — not just of its leadership and cadres, who feel indignant and frustrated at what they claim to be the forced exit of President Nasheed. They need time even more for cooling the tensions that had built up between the party, the government of President Nasheed and various institutions and arms thereof. The MNDF and the police force are main components of such a scheme, and without addressing the issues triggered by the ‘mutiny charge’ and frequent changes at the top with them, an MDP President could be a burden to the nation than a boon. The latter, not the former, should be the case, post-poll.

The MDP needs to give the nation and parliament time to rework the institutional framework as they exist, though not time enough for imbibing in them a new sense of purpose and direction expected of them in a democratic scheme. The latter would take a lot more of time, and Rome, after all was not built in day. Putting the cart before the horse will also be a lop-sided approach which could only upset the MDP apple-cart, and the larger cause even more in a fledgling democracy with its inherent and institutional problems that have already shown up for what they are worth — or, not worth.

The inherent problem to post-Gayoom democracy in Maldives owes to the kind of constitution that they all produced in haste in 2008, with the sole aim of getting the incumbent out of their way, and of the nation’s way, as they had thought. That many political parties that are now against the MDP and are thus in the Waheed dispensation, had worked with the MDP to have their way when Gayoom was the sole power-centre. Just because they have fallen out even before the ink on the constitutional document had dried up, they, together with the MDP, cannot expect the inherent institutional inadequacies, to drop out, too.

Today, the MDP still wants to keep the political ghost of Gayoom alive, to try and win another election. It refuses to understand that after three years in office, and wide publicity that a thinly spread-out nation had not seen before, the voter would be judging the MDP by President Nasheed’s tenure, and not by that of his predecessor, per se. The near-dignified conduct of the government parties to the MDP’s street protests and parliamentary behaviour is a silent message that the MDP should be reading, instead. This coupled with the cost of living and dollar-rate are among the issues agitating the voters, and would be more so than democracy issues, as flagged by the MDP, if only after a time from now.

Electoral agenda

At the end of the day, both the MDP and its opponents in government are working on narrow political, rather electoral agendas, and are not on a national manifesto that the constitution still enshrines. The MDP would want to strike the electoral iron when people’s memory is still hot on the democracy and injustice issues that it now flags. The party does not seem to have the confidence to go back to the voters, based on its claims to be a better government than its predecessor. The government parties are also aware of the MDP strategy, and seem to be working with the sole aim of denying the MDP the pleasure of early elections.

The government parties also have the problem of having to decide early on about their own strategy for fresh presidential elections, and would want that date pushed as far back as possible. It would have been a different ball-game had presidential polls come in their natural course. The focus would then have been on President Nasheed and his completed five-year term. The question now is whether they would want to contest the first round of presidential polls independently or collectively, or in different combinations – and re-work their strategies for the second, run-off round, if they are confident of a second round in the first place. The last time round, all anti-Gayoom parties contested alone in the first round, but pooled their votes in favour of Nasheed, the first runner-up to give the latter his first electoral entry into the nation’s politics.

If the parties decide to go it alone now again, political morals dictate that their representatives on an otherwise apolitical Cabinet pull out before the presidential polls. One alternative to the possibility is to talk the MDP into joining what truly should be a ‘national unity government’, as propagated by President Waheed on assuming office, but not necessarily afterward. The other and worse alternative would be for the incumbent President to reconstitute his Cabinet, and yet hope that Parliament would clear the names.

It is a pre-requisite of the times that Parliament clear President Waheed’s team, as the Government parties had insisted upon when President Nasheed was in office. With Independents still holding key to a parliamentary majority, it could mean a lot in terms of compromises, if not corruption charges for purchasing their loyalties, which could at best be issue-based, and for obvious reasons. This is not the kind of democracy that Maldives and Maldivians deserve.

The ruling parties now have to record with appreciation the successive climb-downs that the anguished and aggressive MDP has made since President Nasheed’s exit. The peaceful conduct of successive rallies after the first one 24 hours after the exit had turned violent, should be a case in point. Maldives cannot even afford the police force clashing with the MDP cadres, and contributing to the continuance of peace in political rallies has become a condition-precedent for the Maldivian State to maintain a semblance of order and structure than at any time in the past decades. The alternative could be outright anarchy, and the dividing line is too thin for the nation to strain.

Likewise, the MDP has also begun participating in the roadmap talks, for which it had earlier laid pre-conditions. It may be true that the party has used the talks only to drive home its demand for early polls, and nothing more, it would soon (have to) realise how it needs the rest as they may need the party. Again, it can settle for a continued deadlock the kind of which that started the nation at the face under President Nasheed in 2010. This time round, however, such a deadlock could mean that the presidential polls may not become due until November 2013 — which is against the party’s demands and expectations.

There is a consensus that a new President should have a full five-year term, and not the residual term for which President Nasheed was elected in 2008 and a part of which President Waheed is now entitled under the Constitution. The MDP needs to acknowledge that it needs the rest of them all to have the constitution amended with a two-thirds vote, to facilitate an early election that they want. Not having compromised on issues in Parliament in the past, and having deflected the nation’s focus from one issue to another, the party may now find it difficult to take firm positions on the Roadmap even if in terms of reaching where it wants to reach.

Parliament, and not Male’s street, is the venue, and nothing is going to change inside the Chamber beyond a point by pressures from outside. If that were so, it would have happened even when President Nasheed was in office. Hoping to play the old game and paint President Waheed’s team as a revival of President Gayoom’s ‘autocracy’ has not convinced anyone who mattered elsewhere. It would remain so even more. The MDP, more than the rest, has to learn to work with other elements in a democracy and the government in a democracy. Possibly because they have to live down their ‘autocratic past’, the rest of them all seem to be less judgmental or unit-directional than the MDP.

Learning from others mistakes

It is unfortunate that mischievous sections tended to attribute motives to Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai’s reported reference to the Roadmap propositions at the all-party meeting that he was invited to attend by President Waheed, during his second and more recent visit to Maldives after the political crisis blew up in the first week of February. As Indian officials have already clarified and explained, Secretary Mathai was only referring to the roadmap that all of them had agreed upon during his previous visit, and which the all-party conference chair too had circulated for fixing priority. That was the crux of the matter, and not the Indian position, of which there was none.

Coming from the world’s largest and equally complex of democracies, Foreign Secretary Mathai’s prescriptions, if any, would have been the quintessence of the Indian experience and exposure to a scheme that was alien to the shared sub-continental pride and traditions. Maldives can learn from other people’s mistakes. Alternatively, it could learn the lessons by going through the birth-pangs of democracy itself, which the nation anyway cannot avoid after a point, despite external prescriptions to induce pain at appropriate times and extinguish the same on other occasions. It is for Maldives and Maldivians to decide which, what and when they want them -and how, and how much of each. The rest of it all would follow, as if they were a natural course.

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: Maldives goes from one crisis to another

Stone-walling and deflecting one issue with another have been tested methods of political strategy and administrative tactic in ‘matured’ democracies elsewhere. The young Maldivian democracy seems to have fast-tracked the processes and fine-tuned the methodology, and as a result these two aspects alone have remained three years after the nation heralded multi-party democracy and a directly-elected President in a hotly-contested campaign.

The latest in the series is the arrest of Chief Justice of the Criminal Court, Abdullah Mohammed, and the involvement of the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) in executing the request of the police in this regard. Allegations have remained against the judge since the days of the predecessor Government of President Maumoon Gayoom, but his arrest, the involvement of the nation’s armed forces and the subsequent non-compliance of the orders of the civil court and the High Court in the matter, have all raised serious questions about the future of democracy in the country.

The last time, the Government of President Mohammed Nasheed employed the MNDF likewise was in mid-2010. At the time, the MNDF shut down the nation’s Supreme Court, under his orders, following a constitutional deadlock over the inability of the Executive and Oppositions-majority Parliament to pass required legislation on a variety of subjects, under the new Constitution, before the deadline had passed. Saner counsel (particularly low-profile Indian efforts) prevailed and the deadlock was resolved at the time.

Now, as then, ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) leaders, starting with President Nasheed, have called for ‘judicial reforms’. They have also reiterated the request from 2010, for the UN to help the nation introduce new canons of law and judicial practices. There is truth in the Government claims that most of the 170-odd judicial officers across the country were not qualified in law. As was known at the time of the 2010 crisis, only around 30 of all judicial officers in the country had a university degree in law.

As was again explained at the time, in a country where education stopped at A-Level (Cambridge, to be precise) for most, lawyers, and law and judicial officers with university degrees are hard to come by. Qualified lawyers in Maldives, as has been the wont in most other democracies and for historic reasons, either prefer private practice with a corporate clientele, or politics, or both. Yet, it is often argued, that the rest of the 170-plus were qualified in the Islamic Sharia. It is this that the present regime wanted to rewrite. Inherent to the effort is also the belief that most judges, having been appointed by the previous regime and without formal qualifications, tended to be loyal more to the erstwhile rulers than to the present Government and/or the Constitution.

Rallying cause for the Opposition

Independent of the merits involved in Judge Abdullah’s arrest, it has provided a rallying cause for the Opposition, after the hugely-successful December 23 protest to ‘protect Islam’. In between came the arrest of an Opposition leader, Dr Mohammed Jameel, Vice-President of the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) of Dr Hassan Saeed, one-time Presidential Advisor to incumbent Nasheed and Attorney-General to predecessor Gayoom. The arrest of the otherwise controversial judge, against whom the first charges were laid by Hassan Saeed as Attorney-General as far back as 2005, has seen that the ‘December 23 movement’, launched by non-political NGOs, now consolidating itself into a political front.

With Judge Abdulla’s arrest, the divided opposition that had joined the ‘protect Islam’ rally under the care of religion-based NGOs, have taken over the leadership of the movement, if the latter still claims to be apolitical with a single-point agenda. This may also lend credence to the Government’s argument that the ‘protect Islam’ movement, based on the installation of individual monuments by SAARC member-countries after the Addu Summit in November, was more political and less religious in form and content. In popular perception, that may not be saying a lot, as one after the other, the issues that the Government seems wanting to offer the Opposition, has only helped the latter to sink their differences even more and consolidate their unity, which prior to December 23 protest was not seen as being possible, particularly during the run-up to the 2013 presidential polls.

The controversy surrounding the SAARC monuments, starting with that of ‘Islamic Pakistan’, being idolatrous in nature, may have robbed much of the credit that the Maldivian Government and President Nasheed richly deserved. MDP leaders are not tired of claiming that it was all part of a larger political conspiracy, aimed at upsetting President Nasheed’s growing popularity during the long run-up to the 2013 polls. Conversely, the divided Opposition of the time was arguing that the Government was deliberately flagging religious issues that went beyond the SAARC monuments, if only to ensure that President Nasheed got a party and challenger of his choice in the polls which they were convinced would go into the second, run-off round.

The issues included clearance for liquor sale in a newly-built star-hotel in the national capital of Male, proposals for allowing liquor sale in uninhabited parts of otherwise inhabited islands, both going against existing laws, and the demolition of an Islamic school, again in Male. Neither the pro-Islam NGOs, nor the opposition could have divined the ‘SAARC monuments’ controversy, but when it presented itself, they were not the ones to lag behind. Today, the December 23 rally is being projected as the largest gathering of the type in the country – with most partnering outfits in the erstwhile ‘pro-democratic’ movement of the earlier years having switched sides, since.

Role of the Vice-President

A new dimension has been added to the current crisis with the Opposition leaders and other partners in the December 23 movement calling on Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Hassan. Though it has been a practice for Maldivian political class to hold their public rallies and have their consultations post-dinner time and possibly going beyond 2 am, the urgency with which they called on the Vice-President at 1 am did not go unnoticed. The country’s first PhD-holder (from Stanford University), Waheed has resisted the MDP’s persuasive efforts to merge his GaumeeIththihad Party (GIP, or National Unity Party) with the major electoral partner, for him to be considered for the running-mate of President Nasheed again in 2013. Quiet in temperament, this former UN/UNICEF executive did not take kindly to the MDP later wooing away his senior Cabinet colleagues to its side.

At the end of the meeting with the Vice-President, the interim leader of Gayoom’s newly-floated Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), the controversial Ummer Naseer, told the local media that they had decided to “pledge support to the Vice-President.” Quoting Naseer, local media reports said, “Dr Waheed assured the party leaders that he would “take any legal responsibility he had to within the bounds of the law and was “ready to take over the duties specified in the Constitution.” In an even more significant observation, Naseer was quoted thus: “After these discussions we are now calling upon the nation’s security forces, on behalf of our ‘December 23 Alliance’ of all the Opposition parties in the country as well as the NGO coalition, to immediately pledge their allegiance to the Vice-President.”The stand of the ‘December 23 alliance’ was that President Mohamed Nasheed has “lost his legal status”, the media quoted Naseer as saying further.

The President’s camp did not seem overly or overtly perturbed by the development. President Nasheed’s Press Secretary Mohamed Zuhair was quoted by the media that the Vice-President “has not said anything to cause a loss of confidence in him by the Government. “He was very careful in his statement, which was that he would undertake his duties as stipulated in the Constitution. Had the protesters gone to meet with (Fisheries Minister and MDP president) Dr Ibrahim Didi or (MDP parliamentary party leader) Reeko Moosa they would have said the same thing,” Zubair said.

The protesters claimed to represent 13 political parties and 21 NGOs, Zuhair said, “but all the rallies have seen the involvement of no more than 300-400 people. It is very disproportionate”. According to him, “The protests are slowing down and now they are trying to save face – pledging allegiance to the Vice-President is the same as pledging allegiance to the government. The VP is working in Cabinet today – there is no rift. This is a non-story,” Zubair maintained. The government was not concerned about Dr Waheed’s late night meeting with Opposition leaders, as letting the protesters into his house “was the polite thing to do,” Zuhair said. He also dismissed Opposition claims that there was anti-Government sentiment brewing in the security forces.

As in most democracies, the President – and by extension, the Vice-President, can be removed from office only through an impeachment motion in Parliament, with two-thirds of the members voting in favour. In a People’s Majlis with 77 members, the figure comes to 51. Neither the ruling party, nor the opposition (combine) has the number, and both have been falling back on the Independents to add up the numbers for obtaining a simple majority for their legislative initiatives, from time to time. Like the US pattern, the Maldivian scheme does not provide for fresh elections in case the presidency fell vacant mid-term. The Vice-President steps in, instead, to complete the unfinished term.

At the height of the ‘constitutional crisis’ triggered by the Government, entailing the en masse resignation of the entire Cabinet in mid-2010, Vice-President Waheed, would not comply with the MDP initiative, for him to quit, too. Owing to Vice-President Waheed’s considered stand, the Executive could not proceed with a politico-electoral showdown with the Opposition-majority Parliament, particularly over their criticism of the GMR contract for the modernisation of the Male International Airport, involving the Indian infrastructure major.

The Opposition, going by sections of the local media, has twisted President Nasheed’s alleged statement that he would not go in for fresh elections until he had ‘reformed’ the judiciary. The observation was contained in a leaked tape, which was broadcast by sections of the local media, and is purported to be contained in a conversation with the MNDF. The Opposition has interpreted this to argue that President Nasheed had no intention of holding elections, when due, by arguing that the promised judicial reforms were not yet over. It was also the reason for their mid-night meeting with Vice-President Waheed.

A surprising element in the current controversy is the unexpected criticism of the Government’s action by Dhiyana Sayeed, the Maldivian Secretary-General of SAARC since the Addu Summit in November. A nominee of the Nasheed leadership for the top job in the SAARC, which is as rotational as the SAARC Chair, the first woman Secretary-General of SAARC promptly put in her papers, as the SAARC Charter specifically prohibits the organisation from interfering in the internal affairs of member-countries. In between, she had also courted arrest for a brief while along with the ‘December 23 movement’ leaders, protesting Judge Abdullah’s arrest. Though not very well known nearer home or overseas, given in particular, her short stint at SAARC, the former Attorney-General has still stirred the net, nonetheless.

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

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

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Comment: South Asia should become single economic entity

There is an increasing realisation in New Delhi about the cross-benefits available to the country on social, political, economic and strategic fronts from its neighbours as they are bound to benefit from healthy bilateral and multilateral arrangements encompassing the entire South Asian region. The idea should be making the rest of the world see the South Asia region in its geo-strategic and politico-economic entity without individual nations having to compromise on traditional rights of sovereignty, as understood in the modern times.

Owing to a variety of reasons, both historic and management-related, India is the dominant force in South Asia. This fact cannot be ignored, over-looked or upset. Sovereignty rights do exist without compromise, but there is a greater understanding in all South Asian countries that it should be used as a tool for greater integration and inter-dependence, and not as a weapon to out-shout one another in terms of numbers in organisations such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Increasingly, SAARC summits that once used to be a periodic pause have come to acquire a certain degree of cohesion, direction and cooperation among member-nations.

This scheme needs to be further strengthened, so as to make South Asia a single economic entity while dealing with the rest of the world. Sovereignty would not be compromised if member-nations volunteered to surrender some to the regional forum themselves. Political controversies of the India-Pakistan kind have ceased to undermine the relevance and usefulness of SAARC. Such differences have often come in the way of regional cooperation taking faster strides. Yet, to expect SAARC to take any political initiative to try and resolve the problems between the ‘Big Two’ in the South Asian community is fraught with consequences for the regional entity, which is still fledging despite being around for 25 long years.

Over the years, a view had emerged among certain strategic thinkers in India that the neighbours stood to benefit more from a regional union than was the other way round. The real situation was always not so – and it continues to remain more so even today. India of the economic reforms era has to begin looking at South Asian neighbours not as a challenge in the global job market. It is a synergy all nations can build into a common cause, particularly in the services sector that they excel in. It is going to take a long, long way, to ensure that bilateral and regional cooperation of the kind, but time is no more on the side of South Asia, if it has to benefit from the existing advantages that once used to be seen as disadvantage.

Time was not long ago when the world used to growl at the growing population in countries such as China and India, the underpinning being that the rest of ’em all were being forced to produce food and other consumables for populous countries to consume without any check on their growth rates on this score. Magically over the past decades, both nations have become attractive markets not only for goods but also for investments. Controlled population in the developed world has re-engineered their perception of Third World countries like India and China for out-sourcing not only the 21st century services sector jobs but also their traditional manufacturing strengths.

Learning from the West

South Asia has lessons to learn from this new and changing perception of the West. New Delhi, to begin with, has to acknowledge that the entire South Asian region is a market for India and Indian investments in this continuing era of economic instability in the developed world. It is not unlikely that the ‘New Cold War’ between the West and China may lead to a situation where a weakened dollar could hit on the former more than the latter, both in terms of existing concepts and practices. Big-time Indian investors seeking to serve even the Indian markets may be attracted by the comparable costs prevailing in the manufacturing sector in some of the neighbourhood countries. Likewise, South Asian neighbours of India may find distinct advantages in doing business with and in India, not available to them elsewhere, particularly in terms of transportation costs, etc.

Economic integration would still require a lot more to be done, and thought of. The ‘big-nation-small-nation’ mix in the European Union and the ASEAN have shown the way for South Asia not to mix up sentiments with the business of planning for the future. For larger nations like India, and even Pakistan up to a point, to feel comfortable, nations of the region should unite not to encourage profligacy and also address governance and procedural issues in a big way. At the same time, they will have to fashion an economic model that addresses inherent socio-economic disparities that have political consequences, as is being evidenced at present in countries of the region after the IMF-dictated economic reforms came into force. This would be a departure from the IMF model that all of them have got accustomed to but may have to deviate from.

In sectors like education and engineering, agriculture and automobile sector, healthcare and rocket science that India has a lot to offer the neighbourhood. None of these nations can grudge India for what it is. The sheer size of its landmass, economy and market has together made it an attractive investment proposition. There is this realisation in all the neighbourhood countries that they should also seek to benefit from the current Indian boom and participate in the processes involved. At the same time, there is also a need for India and Indians to recognise the talent-pool that these nations have to offer, particularly in the labour sector. Encouraging this pool in positive ways alone would help India create the markets that it would need to seek in the immediate neighbourhood, to benefit from the logistical and transportation advantages that proximity has to offer.

The Indian decision to create a `50,000-crore fund to help nations in need would go a long way in fostering better relations in the neighbourhood, if administered as effectively and efficiently as intended. The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and nations and people in the neighbourhood and also elsewhere in the world could appreciate the Indian assistance, only if it is both adequate and timely. In countries like Sri Lanka and Maldives, and also in the extended South-East Asian neighbourhood, nations were appreciative of the Indian intervention when tsunami struck in end-December 2004. In money-value, the Indian decision to rush Navy, Air Force and medicines to the affected people in these countries was not as substantial as on many other occasions. But I t was the timeliness of it all that came to be appreciated, including the fact that New Delhi had rushed help when parts of India were also similarly affected by tsunami. In tactical terms, it also proved the preparedness of the Indian armed forces to rush aid to the neighbourhood without much of a notice.

Ending ‘Cold War’ perceptions

Independent of economic perception is the evolving regional strategic consideration that South Asia has to learn to live as a single unit in overall terms if individual nations have to be secure and feel secure. Barring India, no other nation in the region has to fear for extra-territorial aggression of any kind. Their security concerns are domestic in nature, or are based on their perceptions of India, flowing from a collective ‘Cold War’ past. In the case of former, linkages are beginning to be made as to how problems can multiply for everyone if the regional nations did not work together — or, do not stop targeting one another.

In terms of their perceptions of India, New Delhi has been doing enough over the past decade and more, to make individual nations of the region, including Pakistan, feel friendly. India too continues to be affected by its memories about the role individual nations of the region could play to make it feel insecure in different ways. Where nations could not take on India directly, whatever their perception and consideration, they were known to have provided base for other adversaries of India to do so. Whether it was a strategy or tactic, their attempts had paid off in terms of making India feel uncomfortable, if not aggressive.

Steeped in contemporary history as also the distant past, the chances would not occur overnight, but here again there is a need for everyone concerned to acknowledge that time is running out, after all. Political India is however beginning to understand the complexities in multi-lateral relations, where individual neighbours are seen as trading with extra-territorial powers, in terms of politics, economic cooperation and infrastructure creation. There is also an emerging understanding all-round that their strategic security is closely linked, and any effort at inducting extra-territorial powers would have an economic and developmental cost to play — which their domestic constituencies might not countenance hereafter.

In this context, it is necessary for everyone, including India, to acknowledge that the packaging development aid (in whatever form) is also a way for extra-territorial powers to acquire strategic depth in the region. The question now will be to accept certain realities, including problem areas, and address the issues in a forthright manner in which solutions are found. A road-map for collective development has to be laid out and practised in ways in which they do not hamper the strategic security cooperation that these countries have to adopt – but become part of that process, too. The step-by-step approach adopted by SAARC may not be fast but it is the right way. As resolved by them at the Addu Summit in Maldives in 2011, it would be a good idea if the SAARC nations meet the goals set for them before the next Summit, and yet fast-track the processes in ways that the political leaderships would find the need for shortening the deadlines for individual and collective action, without having to extend them, indefinitely.

Yet, political issues will remain, as between India and Pakistan, but not exclusive to them alone. Even smaller nations such as Nepal and Bhutan, for instance, have issues between them. Problems flowing from governance apparatus and decision-making processes remain. Though most South Asian nations had inherited the British colonial model, post-Independence, many have reverted to the pre-colonial model of personalised decision-making apparatus but under a constitutional, democratic scheme. Though in India, too, personalised politics is a hallmark, structures of decision-making remain intact. In Pakistan, at different levels, the armed forces may have their say. Differences in perceptions among South Asian nations about the decision-making processes in others have often led to confusion and consternation. Either they put their heads together to work on a common governance scheme for them all to draw from, or learn to live with whatever they have in others, instead, and work together, 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: Sri Lanka- Where from here, LLRC Report?

With the international community reacting on expected lines to the Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the matter could now be expected to be taken up by the West in forums where they have a say. The LLRC was purportedly set up to ‘fix’ accountability for alleged ‘war crimes’, but is said to have fallen short of fixing any responsibility on any one. The pitch will be queried possibly at the March session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, where the Sri Lankan efforts to buy time had paid off in September. Yet, Colombo will have to be more than being innovative and imaginative to ward off furthering of what it perceives as the Tamil Diaspora efforts at embarrassing the Government and scuttling the on-going political negotiations with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

The LLRC, itself a product of protests at the UN, UNHCR and elsewhere by the international community, and campaigns launched successively by INGOs and sections of the global media, has all but cleared the Sri Lankan political leadership and armed forces command of any wrong-doing for what it acknowledges as the ‘considerable’ loss of lives in the last stages of the war. Until the LLRC Report was out the Government had denied such charges, and stuck to its considered and well-intentioned war-time policy of ‘zero-casualty’ on the civilian front. The Commission, in its report submitted to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, suggested that the Government to inquire into individual cases of wrongful deaths and disappearances.

Tabling the LLRC Report in Parliament, Leader of the House and Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva promised to investigate individual cases of the kind to fix criminality behind such deaths and disappearances. This has cut both ways as sections of the international community have reacted in ways that reflect along their known positions vis a vis Sri Lanka in the contemporary geo-political context, where human rights and violations are seen as being interpreted in political, and not absolute terms. It is thus that the US has reacted strongly while Canada, which has been vociferous for action against Sri Lanka until recently, has welcomed the LLRC Report and yet commented that it was still inadequate.

In a way, western nations that have since commented on the LLRC Report have stopped short of demanding an international inquiry. They are possibly waiting for the promised Government action on the Report before making up their minds. China, a known backer of Sri Lanka ever since war crime charges came to be thrown at Colombo, has not named the LLRC Report but wants to allow the country to address internal problems internally. Russia, another perceived ally of Sri Lanka in the matter, has maintained silence thus far. Russia and China, both veto-powers in the UN Security Council, are seen as opposing any global bias against Sri Lanka when charges of human rights violations could be thrown at many other nations as well. Their support for Colombo in the UNSC had forced the West to take up the matter to the UNHCR, where it now rests.

Preparing the defences on the domestic front?

In a move that surprised many, President Rajapaksa told Parliament, post-LLRC Report, that the United National Party (UNP) rival had failed to rally round Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to propose alternative programmes for the nation, but were resorting to in-fighting all the time. UNP dissidents who had lost inner-party elections to the Wickremesinghe camp only a day or two earlier, alleged, as in the past, a secret understanding between the two leaders. As if by cue, Wickremesinghe himself alleged that a foreign NGO had funded party dissidents, and the Government too did not lose much time in promising a probe.

Separately, there were also reports of the Government and family members of jailed former army commander Sarath Fonseka negotiating the latter’s release through a parliamentarian, after his twin convictions and consequent imprisonment were upheld by the appellate judiciary. As commander of the armed forces at the height of ‘Eelam War IV’, Fonseka had gone on to contest Rajapaksa’s re-election for the presidency, and embarrassing both, and also the nation’s troops in the process, through a series of media interviews that would put the political and military leadership in an uncomfortable light on the human rights front in particular.

Wickremesinghe’s charge against an INGO, while keeping the more ‘nationalist’ UNP dissidents on the bind, could go to strengthen Colombo’s earlier claims that foreign governments and funding agencies were interfering in the internal affairs of the country. Team Rajapaksa had laid such charges when Wickremesinghe had contested against him in 2005, and later when Fonseka was the common Opposition nominee during President Rajapaksa’s post-war re-election bid of 2010. Media reports indicate a competition between Wicrkemesinghe and the UNP on the one hand, and the leadership of the Democratic National Alliance (DNA), an unacknowledged breakaway group of the Left-leaning JVP, on the other, seeking to claim credit for Fonseka’s release, if it materialised.

Simultaneously now, the Government has hardened the stand on the political negotiations and the TNA, declining any bargaining on three contentious issues, namely re-merger of the North and the East, Police and Land powers. It has begun likening the TNA to the erstwhile Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), with President Rajapaksa making a reference in a meeting with Editors, followed by a public mention of the same in Parliament. It is possible that the Government’s new position may have flowed from signals that the West may not any more link accountability issues to progress on the political negotiations — and that they were stand-alone issues for them, after all. It thus remains to be seen if Colombo would first succeed in re-establishing such linkages for the Geneva session to delay action, at least until the regular, once-in-four-year HR review of the country becomes due in September next.

Playing for time, or what?

Whatever it be, Sri Lanka seems to be always playing for time in the matter, rather than addressing issues squarely. It owes to the deliberate diplomatic posturing of the West wanting accountability issues to rest at the door-steps of the political and bureaucratic masters of the armed forces, as much as the higher command — but not wanting to put across the idea in substantive terms. Such a course, while reading undiplomatic, would also lead to charges that the West had pre-judged issues and was biased in the matter. Yet, friends of Sri Lanka have been frustrated by the imaginative interpretations often offered by Colombo to emerging situations, which however had often flowed from its previous commitments.

The Colombo Government knows what the West is aiming at but pretends as if it does not understand. This has given the impression that Colombo is non-serious in its approach to HR violations and consequent commitments from the past. The Government denies such charges squarely. Instead, Government leaders have often argued that the international community has been acting in ways that has been providing oxygen to separatists in the country at a time when it could ill-afford the same, in terms of political stability and developmental programmes in the post-war era. To the Government leaders, the West is weighed down not as much by considerations of human rights but by compulsions of Diaspora constituency back home.

From among the friends of Sri Lanka, Russia was the first one to speak out when the controversial ‘Darusman Report’ from the three-member advisory committee appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was made public. China followed suit. The burden of the two positions was that Sri Lanka was being singled out by the West, many of whose members had wronged more on the HR front even in recent years, and that Colombo should be allowed to address the issues through internal mechanisms. Now that the focus has thus shifted to the LLRC Report, from Darussman Report, it will be interesting to note what positions Beijing and Moscow take on the follow-up action, at least as far as the Sri Lankan Government goes.

The fact however remains that during the course of ‘Eelam War IV’, the Sri Lankan leadership had reportedly and repeatedly promised the international community of imminent political solution to the ethnic issue once they had helped Colombo to end LTTE terrorism for good. That has not happened since. Independent of the Government’s submissions on the scope and scheme of the current negotiations with the post-LTTE TNA, the general perception continues to blame the former as being as ‘insincere’ as it was over the past 60 years. Now the perceived unwritten understanding between President Rajapaksa and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe may be used to paint the ‘Sinhala majority’ with a common brush, as in the past.

N Sathiya Moorthy is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

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

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Comment: Maldives: ‘Political Islam’ here to stay?

Maldivians, particularly the security authorities in the country, may have heaved a sigh of relief after the competing rallies by the NGOs and the political Opposition on the one hand, and the ruling MDP on the other, went off peacefully on Friday last. They had anticipated rioting and violent clashes for which public protests of the kind are often known in the country. Yet, the fact also remains that the competitive posturing on the type of Islam that the moderate Muslim country should follow may have made ‘political Islam’ the core of public discourse in the country in the long run-up to the presidential polls that are however due only in October 2013.

UNHRC chief Navi Pillay thus should be contented, if not happy, for what Maldives is doing since her proposing a national discourse on the kind of Islam that the country should be following. She made the suggestion during a visit to the country in November, both inside and outside Parliament. While protesting Navi Pillay’s proposal making Islam a debatable issue, the otherwise divided Opposition parties lending support to seven NGO organisers of the rally, have done precisely that. By competing with them, the MDP, particularly President Mohammed Nasheed, has thrown a challenge to the rival camp, declaring that the nation had to decide the kind of Islam it wanted to follow.

Addressing the MDP rally on Friday evening, President Nasheed said it was a ‘defining moment’ in the nation’s history. “At this moment we may not realise how important this gathering is, but years down the line we will look back and realise this was a crucial moment,” he said.”This is an old country, people have lived here for thousands of years and we have practiced Islam for more than 800 years. In 2011, we are faced with a question, how should we build our nation: what we will teach our children, how should we live our lives, and what will we leave for future generations?” President Nasheed, according to a Press release issued by his office, stressed that he wanted to continue to practice a tolerant form of Islam.

The President said that he believed that the Maldivians wanted “a better life, the ability to travel, not to have to beg for medicines, for each Maldivian to be able to fend for themselves, feed their families and stand tall.” He said, “To build our economy we need foreign investments and we need to create an environment in which foreigners can invest. We can’t be scared of foreign countries; we can’t just stay within our shells without development. History shows this is the path to economic failure…We can’t achieve development by going backwards to the Stone Age or being ignorant.”

Taking the political battle on moderate Islam to the Opposition camp, President Nasheed asked: “Should we ban music? Should we mutilate girls’ genitals? Should we allow nine year-olds to be married? Should we forbid art and drawing? Should we be allowed to take concubines? Is this nation-building?” Even while standing up for values that he has reiterated that he stands for steadfastly, President Nasheed was also setting the agenda for his re-election campaign for 2013, and by his strident position on moderate Islam, possibly hopes to retain much, if not all of the youth voters that had contributed to his success in the 2008 polls. In a country where the 18-25 age-group accounts for 40-45 per cent of the population, that is saying a lot.

This may not end here, though. The Opposition’s protest for protecting Islam has also provided a platform for them to come together after the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP) of former President Maumoon Gayoom split earlier in the year, with the splinter group identified with his leadership floating the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) more recently. Both DRP, now under Gayoom’s 2008 running-mate Thasmeen Ali and PPM leader Abdulla Yameen, half-brother of the former President, shared the dais with other Opposition party leaders at the Friday rally. This need not mean that they would settle for a common alliance and candidate to challenge the incumbent in 2013, but that has since become a possibility, nonetheless. This would be more so if the presidential polls run into a second, run-off round, as in 2008.

An ‘Afghanistan’ in the making?

Ahead of the rally, Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem too cautioned the nation that an increase in extremist rhetoric might affect the country’s international image and the ability of its citizens to freely travel abroad. Maldives had “a lot to lose” should such intolerance continue, the local media quoted Naseem as saying. “A large number of Maldivians travel outside the country and such rhetoric will have implications for the average Maldivian travelling abroad, and on those Maldivians already living abroad,” he said, pointing out that Maldives was a liberal democracy “with a Constitution based upon respect for the human rights of all.”

Appearing before the National Security Council of Parliament, Police Commissioner Ahmed Faseeh reportedly expressed concern that Maldives was heading towards becoming another “Afghanistan” – except that unlike Afghanistan, it was not able to produce its own food. Organisers of both the ‘Defend Islam’ and ‘Moderate Islam’ protests also assured the committee that there would be no violence at the rival rallies. As subsequent events proved, the rally organisers proved the police chief wrong, after he had said that local gangs had potential to capitalise on the opportunities to their own benefit if political parties ended up using them, even if for a good cause.

However, there was no immediate response to a report in the Indian newspaper, The Hindu, in which top Government sources claimed that Pakistan funding was available for the Opposition rally. Interestingly, the ‘Defend Islam’ protest and movement has its origins in fundamentalist elements destroying the Pakistani monument for the 17th SAARC Summit in the southern Addu City, describing it as idolatry. The Navi Pillay observations only hastened the process, even though indications are that the fundamentalist Adhaalath Party, which is at the back of the pro-Islam protests has been targeting the US and Israel, and their purported influence on the Government of President Nasheed, in matters that they argue are anti-Islamic.

‘Prisoner of Conscience’

The US has been made the villain of the piece in Afghanistan and Iraq, two Islamic nations, while Israel has been targeted over the Palestine issue, with the Nasheed Government’s decision to permit the Israeli airliner to operate flights to Maldives providing the immediate provocation and justification. Fundamentalist groups, as also the political Opposition, are not convinced that Maldives could not cast its vote on admitting Palestine into UNESCO owing to a communication gap, which meant that the official delegation had flown home early on. In private, they argue that either the decision did not make sense or the Government did not do its homework properly as Palestine was admitted into UNESCO, after all. Here again, they see a western hand.

A day after the Friday rallies, reports said that the Afghanistan monument for the SAARC Summit at the southern Addu City had been vandalised and thrown into the sea, like those of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. A replica of Afghanistan’s Jam minaret, featuring Koranic phrases and a UNESCO World Heritage site, the monument could not be restored, reports from Addu said. The Haveeru quoted local MDP leaders as saying that the party was not behind the vandalism, adding that it owed to ‘political reasons’.

Interestingly, Amnesty International has described as ‘prisoner of conscience’, blogger Ismail ‘Khilasth’ Rasheed, who was arrested after being attacked when he was addressing a small group, defending religious freedom in the national capital of Male a fortnight back. Foreign Minister Naseem said it was a matter of concern to the international community. Rasheed’s initiative followed UNHRC’s Navi Pillay’s call for religious freedom and for a national discourse for ending flogging of women in the country. As may be recalled, Amnesty had named President Nasheed a ‘prisoner of conscience’ for his pro-democracy political and public initiatives, after he was imprisoned more than once by the erstwhile Gayoom leadership.

For now, the ruling party has called off the ‘moderate Islam’ rallies that were to have continued for two more days, what with the Opposition too ending its protest at the end of day one. After the Friday rallies, presidential spokesman Mohamed Zuhair acknowledged people’s participation in the Opposition protest, and said that the Government would consider their demands. However, he wondered who had made those demands, political parties, or individuals and/or NGOs, which needed to be treated differently. Ahead of the MDP rally, many party seniors, including MPs, had urged President Nasheed not to have their programme on the same day. Some of them also publicly suggested that as Head of State, President Nasheed should not participate in what essentially was a political rally.

While this may have quietened the situation, it remains to be seen how various political players take off from here — or, listen to the voice of reason among a substantial section of the people, who do not want them to make Islam a political issue. There is large-scale apprehension among the masses and the current rallies could trigger societal divisiveness that goes beyond politics and elections, and could also concern larger national interests, starting with security issues, in the months and years to come.

N Sathiya Moorthy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

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

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Comment: Islam to be an election issue?

With two events in as many weeks, the Maldives has been making news both on the home front and in the global arena, for reasons that had been better left untouched.

Coming as they did after the successful SAARC Summit in the southern Addu City, these developments have the potential to become a major political and poll issue ahead of the presidential elections of 2013, if the current trends remain un-reversed.

The first incident flowed from the SAARC Summit itself. Forgetting that Pakistan too was an ‘Islamic State’, religious fundamentalists in Addu ransacked the SAARC memorial erected by Islamabad for depicting what they claimed were idolatrous, ‘un-Islamic’ symbols.

Customary as Pakistani memorials have mostly been, this one carried a bust of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the nation’s flag. At the foot of the pedestal were reliefs of archaeological finds from the Indus Valley Civilisation sites in the country.

Fundamentalists, first in Addu and later in the political capital of Male, claimed that a relief motif represented Lord Buddha. They burnt the whole monument one night and took away the rest. It is as yet unclear if their protests were only over the presence of a perceived representation of Lord Buddha, who is worshipped in many of the SAARC member-nations, or it also related to Jinnah’s bust, as worshipping fellow-humans was also banned in Islam.

It was possibly not without reason that subsequent to the destruction and disappearance of the Jinnah statue, fundamentalists also targeted the Sri Lankan monument, a replica of the nation’s ‘Lion’ emblem. Investigators have to find out if this attack had anything to do with the Buddhist character of Sri Lanka, or was aimed at defusing the embarrassment flowing from the earlier attack on another ‘Islamic Republic’, where again fundamentalism and religious extremism were thriving — targeting not just the immediate neighbourhood but the rest of the world at large.

In contemporary context, Pakistan, along with neighbouring Afghanistan, are considered the global capitals of fundamentalism, from where Maldivian groups are perceived as deriving their strength. In Pakistan, unlike the other two nations, certain State agencies are believed to be aiding, abetting and funding fundamentalist efforts — and for carrying the message to the rest of South Asia and outside, too. Thus the contradiction in the fundamentalist attack on the Pakistan monument was palpable.

A full month after the SAARC Summit, local media reported that the Nepalese monument for SAARC too has been ‘stolen’. They quoted officials to say that the ‘theft’ had taken place when the police on guard duty were in between shifts. With three such desecrations, the authorities, if is said, were considering the wisdom of shifting all SAARC monuments to a central place in Addu and providing 24-hour police security.

Uni-faith character and flogging

The fundamentalists got another shot in the arm not long after when the visiting UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) chief Navneetham Pillay questioned Maldives uni-faith character that did not accept non-Muslims as citizens.

Addressing the People’s Majlis, or Parliament, only a week after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first overseas dignitary to do so, Pillay also questioned the Maldivian law on flogging of women, describing it as inhumane and violating of international commitments by the nation. She called for a national debate.

Since Pillay’s visit, local media has come up with a belated news report, citing a lower court ruling, that growing beard was close to being a religious obligation for males in the country.

According to the daily newspaper Haveeru, Magistrate Ibrahim Hussein in Maafushi, Kaaf Atoll, had overturned a Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Services (DPRS) regulation that instructs its male employees to shave their beards. The DPRS has since challenged the ruling, as the magisterial verdict of March 2 has held that the regulation contradicts with Islamic principles, and cannot be made in a 100 percent Muslim country such as Maldives.

Though wholly unexpected, and possibly taken aback after the monument-burning, the government of President Mohammed Nasheed did not lose much time in expressing regret to the governments of Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It also arrested two persons for the desecration of the Pakistani monument.

The public postures of rival political parties however surprised many. President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) was not as unequivocal as the rest. It was only to be expected under the circumstances, and also given his pro-liberal attitude and public image but individual MPs did declare that there was no question of permitting the practice of other religions in the country.

The opposition parties at one stage seemed to be competing with one another in expressing their solidarity with the Islamic forces. Fundamentalist Adhaalath Party (AP), which had left the government only recently over religious issues, wanted customs officials who had cleared the ‘banned monument’ into the country sued.

A section of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), founded recently by those owing allegiance to former President Maumoon Gayoom, was shriller. Undiluted as yet, a party leader described the two arrested persons as ‘national heroes’ and wanted PPM to defend their case/cause.

Other parties, including the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) with Thasmeen Ali, a former running-mate of Gayoom in the 2008 presidential race, could not be seen as being left far behind. Some of them, including a section in Gayoom’s PPM, sought to draw a distinction between fundamentalism and modern-day issues of sovereignty, in this regard, arguing that installation ofidolatorous monuments and statues challenged the sovereign right of the Maldivian State, including Parliament, to frame a Constitution and laws that reflected the people’s sentiments – and enforce them, too.

Pillay’s utterances, which she repeated at a news conference in Male, revived the argument even more, as political parties felt uncomfortable about commenting unfavourably an issue involving fellow nations like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. To them, the former was an Islamic nation as Maldives, and the latter, the closest neighbour and economic partner, too. Unacknowledged, they were also concerned about possible retaliation in Sri Lanka, where a large number of Maldivians reside, for work, studies or medical care, or use as a transit-point to travel to the rest of the world.

‘Missed opportunity’, says President

Historically, Maldives was home to Dravidian people from south India and also Sri Lankans. Before the arrival of Islam in the atolls-nation in the twelfth century when it was adopted by the ruler and his subjects soon enough, Buddhism was the dominant religion.

As critics of the Addu attacks point out, the National Museum in Male, built by the Chinese in recent years, houses Buddhist artefacts from that era. Maldivian history also has it that among the earlier non-Islamic, non-Buddhist rulers were women — thus possibly explaining relative liberalism to date, barring of course flogging for extra-marital relationship.

Even granting that the Addu incidents were a stand-alone affair, the Pillay controversy, identifiable with the UN system, has triggered calls for condemnation of the parent-organisation. Fundamentalist protestors shouted slogans outside the UN office in Male soon after the Addu incidents.

For starters, Maldivian parliamentarians in general and the mild-mannered Speaker Abdullah Shahid in particular would be uncomfortable until a future guest had completed his or her address to the People’s Majlis, if and when invited.

Answering criticism in this regard, Speaker Shahid said that he too was not privy to what Pillay intended saying. Fresh to such engagement with visiting dignitaries as much to the rest of the democratic scheme, Maldivian parliamentarians had possibly taken Prime Minister Singh’s address as the standard practice. Pillay may have now set them thinking.

Sometime after the dust from the Pillay fiasco had begun settling down, President Nasheed provoked fellow-Maldivians into a national discourse by declaring that “Our faith should not be so easily shaken” by utterances of the Navi Pillay kind.

“To build a nation, we should all have the courage, the patience and the willingness to exercise our minds to its deepest and broadest extent,” the local media quoted him as saying at an official function. By coming down heavily on Pillay’s suggestions, the President said elsewhere that Maldives might have “missed an opportunity” to demonstrate the nobility of the Islamic Sharia.

“We should have the courage to be able to listen to and digest what people tell us, what we hear and what we see,” said Nasheed, adding that Maldivians should not be “so easily swayed and conned. For that not to happen, we have to foster in our hearts a particular kind of national spirit and passion. This national spirit is not going to come into being by not listening, not talking and hiding things, [but] by clearly and transparently saying what we think in our hearts, discussing its merits among us and making decisions based on [those debates].”

Given his democratic credentials and the tendency to throw up issues for national discourse through his weekly radio address, President Nasheed’s observations did not raise hell as his detractors would have hoped for. Nor did it stir the nation into a discourse as he may have hoped for.

However, attackers did take on others, and physically so. A small group of pro-tolerance protestors under the banner of ‘Silent Solidarity’ were stoned by unidentified men when they gathered for a rally, advocating openness to all faiths in the aftermath of Pillay’s advocacy.

Even as the controversy over the Pillay statements was unfolding, Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Naseem lost no time in trying to smoothen out the ruffled Opposition feathers. “What’s there to discuss about flogging?” Minister Naseem was reported as saying, “There is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No one can argue with God.”

The Minister clarified that Maldives had submitted certain reservations to the international conventions that Pillay had referred to, including the provisions on gender equality and freedom of religion. “On these points the country could not be held legally accountable by an international body,” he said further.

Islamic Minister, Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, a renowned religious scholar, lost no time in calling for the removal of idolatrous SAARC monuments. Later after the Pillay controversy, he said that Sharia could not be made a subject of debate.

A representative of the fundamentalist Adhaalath Party who chose to return to the government after the party had pulled out, Dr Bari appealed to the people not to vandalise symbols of other religions. He referred to what he claimed was a retaliatory attack on a local mosque in Addu City and quoted the Quran 6:108, which reads “And do not insult those they invoke other than Allah, lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge. Thus We have made pleasing to every community their deeds. Then to their Lord is their return and He will inform them about what they used to do.”

Dr Bari’s junior colleague and State Minister for Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Rasheed Hussein Ahmed, had a different take on the former’s suggestion for the host nations to take back the monuments. A former president of the Adhaalath Party and native of Addu Atoll who has chosen to stay back in the government (though the party has no parliamentary representation under the Executive Presidency), Dr Rasheed seemed to concur with the official position that it was improper for Maldives to suggest such a course. At the outset thus he indicated the need for securing all SAARC monuments in a common place at Addu. The media has reported that the government was looking at the option in the aftermath of the attack on the Nepalese monument.

Nation-wide protest on cards

Unimpressed by the government’s explanations, if any, the opposition parties have independently or otherwise, extended their support to over 125 non-government organisations (NGOs) that have called for a nation-wide protest on religious issues on December 23.

Some in the opposition, including one-time Minister and presidential aspirant, Jumhooree Party founder Gasim Ibrahim, see in the Addu affair and the Pillay statements a governmental conspiracy aimed at twin-goals –of, allowing other religions into the country and at the same time dilute the Sharia as is being practised in Maldives.

As observers point out, for the past over two years, the government of President Nasheed has been giving a handle to fundamentalist elements to make a hue and cry, every now and again.

Starting with the government’s decision to accept a Guantanamo Bay detainee at the instance of the US, inviting Israeli doctors, farm experts and now their airline, considering permission for liquor sale and consumption in inhabited islands, starting with the national capital of Male’, seeking to make the study of Islam and the national language, Dhivehi, optional for A-Level students, they say, the Nasheed leadership has been seeking to dilute Islamic traditions and practices, one after the other. On the economic front, they have added the IMF-induced reforms and the ‘managed float’ of the dollar to the ‘conspiracy’.

On the one hand, the emergence of one religion-related controversy after another, almost at periodic intervals, has the potential to keep fundamentalism alive, and possibly expanding to take extremist colours, if only over time. On the other, the ever-expanding political support-base that such issues have been attracting confers on the more identifiable practitioners, greater and otherwise unintended legitimacy that is otherwise lacking. Greater legitimacy could strengthen their political cause and electoral presence, as the Adhaalath Party has proved in the local council polls of March 2011. The party materialised unexpected gains in the council polls, limited still as they were. Continued irrelevance on the electoral front, as happened in the presidential polls of 2008, could strengthen the resolve and determination to adopt a more extremist course.

The formation of the PPM and its political identification with the AdhaalathParty for now on the religious front has the potential to keep fundamentalist issues on the fore of the nation’s political and electoral agenda, during the run-up to the presidential polls of 2013. Shriller these sections become, in an attempt to take the elections out of better debatable issues like democracy and economy, greater will be the claims to mass-representation for their otherwise limited support-base. When, where and how the former would drown the latter, if it came to that, is hard to predict at the moment, given in particular the vastness of the nation in terms of the logistical nightmare that an election campaign faces and the prohibitive expenses that it entails. Thus Islam also becomes the first and natural choice to unite the divided Opposition in electoral terms.

President Nasheed’s camp is hopeful of his winning re-election in the first round in 2013. Yet, some voices in his MDP are already talking in public about his scoring 40-per cent and above, much less than the 50-per cent victory-mark and far lower than the 60 per cent his campaign-managers say he was sure to win. With Gayoom and his family ties to the PPM needing no reiteration, some observers think, talking about the ‘misrule’ from the past could help the Nasheed candidacy, particularly if the party were to stick to its new-found Adhaalath ally, for the second round.

From the opposition camp, too, there are hopes that focussing on religion-based issues, rather than those of democracy, economy and family rule, would take their campaign away from further internal strife within parties like DRP and PPM – and among the larger numbers, too.

Yet the official DRP opposition sounds relatively uncomfortable flagging religious issues compared to larger political and economic issues. The DRP’s weakened DQP (Dhivehi Quamee Party) has been focusing on such issues, and is now credited with obtaining a civil court order restraining the Indian infrastructure major GMR Group from collecting a higher $25 entry-fee at the Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA) at Male, for which it has a 25-year modernisation and maintenance contract.

Incidentally, this means that GMR’s projected revenues will fall short by $25 million a year, and the group, it is reported, intends appealing the lower court order. In a way, the court order may have taken the arguments against the GMR contract further away from the hands of fundamentalist groups.

When the contract issues first came up before parliament and public arena in 2009, when it was signed, sections within the undivided DRP of the time, and a few others in the opposition had raised legal, constitutional and procedural issues. They had argued that involving any foreign company in airport modernisation would challenge Maldivian sovereignty. The debate lingers.

For all this however, mainstreaming of fundamentalist ideas and politics may have positive fallout, however limited, under a guided process. Mainstreaming of extreme viewpoints in other democracies has often led to moderation, if only over time. Over the short and the medium terms, sections of the polity with strong and extreme viewpoints have often tended to push their agenda, convictions and beliefs, whether in government or outside. As an Islamic democracy, Maldives is uniquely placed – and could thus become a test case, too.

The question is if the nation can allow itself to be one, now or ever. In a country, where religious moderation has been the hallmark of the society for centuries, the reverse should also be true. Allowing for evolutionary processes to take shape would be a better option rather than imposing externally-induced debates and changes on an otherwise moderate and harmonious society, it is said.

Over the past years, there have been reports of Maldivian youth attending Pakistani madrasas where they were reportedly being taught not just religion and theology but also jihadimilitancy. A 2009 report said that close to a dozen Maldivian youth were among the jihadi militants captured by the US-led forces along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and that they had confessed to being trained in Pakistani madrasas.

The attack thus on the Pakistani monument in Addu City thus raises questions about the authorship of fundamentalism in Maldives, but at the same time also highlights the possible consequences of either course, for Maldives in particular and neighbouring nations, otherwise.

Either way, it is felt that any Islam-centric campaign for elections-2013 would keep the fundamentalists going. They would be targetting larger stakes and goals. Considering that the Maldivian state structure and institutional mechanisms, starting with the national police force, are ill-equipped to address such issues and concerns with any amount of clarity, certainty and work-plan, in terms of intelligence-gathering and dissuasive power at the grassroots-level, President Nasheed, it is said, would be handing himself a tougher task than already in his second term, if his leadership does not drag the nation away from Islam as an election issue.

Deferring such a predicament, either for the self or for successors might still be in his hand, instead.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

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