Ibra: The Full Interview

Ibrahim Ismail, 42, more commonly known as Ibra, is a founding member of the main opposition party, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).

One of 14 children from a middle class family, he was schooled in Male’ before studying at university in Canberra, Australia.

There he studied for a Maths and Physics Undergraduate Degree before going on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and a Masters Degree in Planning and Philosophy.

On his return to the Maldives he worked as a teacher and lecturer before moving to the civil service educational sector.

There he stayed for nearly twenty years, focusing on educational planning and exams. His final post was Head of Quality Improvement before he quit “out of frustration”.

He then started to work as an independent social development and education consultant, cooperating with international development agencies and banks.

In 2004 he stood for election and was voted into the People’s Majlis to represent the Male’ constituency.

Since 1994, like many Maldivians, he has been in and out jail for his political dissent.

He is married with two children, a boy of 7 and a girl of 6.

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Q. So tell me a little bit about your background first – about your past with the MDP and politics in the Maldives.

Well, I will start with the background of the politics – maybe that will make a more logical progression.

As you are most probably aware by now the Maldives has always had autocratic rulers. There hasn’t been proper democratic institutions. Even though we have had a constitution since the early 1930s much of it has really been paid lip service to, and the concept of rule of law, as one you will find in proper democracies, has never really been practiced, in that where there has been laws it has been largely seen as tools for the government and the state to control people and not necessarily as something that the government has to follow.

We have a long history of very autocratic rule, not just limited to the present regime. Only very brief flashes of possible democratic practices have been seen here and there and then very quickly snuffed out.

Q. So is that why you joined the MDP?

Yes. I was one of the initial 42 people who tried to register and operate MDP in 2001. That was because we came to a common belief that in order to dismantle this dictatorship we need to work collectively with the collective vision and we need to organize ourselves into some political thought form. But as you know our initial attempts to form a national Party was snuffed out by the government. It didn’t give us the opportunity to carry it forward and then one thing led to another and in 2005 finally the Government, under intense pressure, I would say from the international community and to an extent from grass roots public pressure, finally relented and they allowed the formation of political parties.

But it is still not a level playing field. The Government puts all the Government resources into containing the opposition and giving a free hand to the Government Party if you like.

So that is how I came into the MDP and how the MDP got off the ground, just very briefly of course there are a number of events which went into the making of it…

Q. And you have played a fairly significant role in the Party up until now, I mean, you have had some fairly important posts.

Yes. I was on the first council when the MDP started operating in exile in Colombo and in the U.K. That was when we were outlawed. While some of us like Nasheed and Latheef and Mausoom and others were working outside the Government, I was here in Male’ trying to get grass roots involved and hold some activities. I think the first political rally in the history of the Maldives, at least in the recent history, was what was started out as some public debates about reform in early 2004, mid 2004.

So that was when the real public activity started and I was there on the ground with them at the time. And since then after the Party was officially formed and recognized by the Government I was in the first Governing Council before proper office bearers were elected and then subsequently I was elected as the first president of the Party. I was in that post until the end of April, early May this year when I resigned, but even after that I have been a member in the Parliamentary Group of the party and the National Council of the Party until I left the Party a few days ago.

Q And presumably with that long history you just described you didn’t take the decision to leave lightly, so what was your motivation behind it?

Well it was not an easy decision to make, obviously, for many reasons, some practical, some emotional.

Emotional reasons being: as I have just described I have been a part of the MDP since the initial inception of the whole concept up until now, so there’s a lot of emotional attachment to the Party. I have done a lot of work for and within the Party in promoting the Party, setting up the Party, often at considerable risk and also a lot of my own supporters have joined the Party and now it’s a bit difficult to make that break.

The practical reasons, again, this puts me in a difficult position politically in that for the moment I am independent, and in a party based parliament it is not so easy to be effective as an independent, in theory at least.

But I think the Maldivian parliament is still in a flux, it is still getting used to the idea of parties and there still aren’t clear procedures of party politics within the parliament yet.

So, yes, it wasn’t an easy decision, it wasn’t taken lightly, a lot of thought went into it and a lot of waving to and fro, kind of thing – should I shouldn’t I. But I think at the end of the day the decision was more a pragmatic decision in terms of the democratisation of the country, the reform process and I felt that my contribution was being constrained by remaining in the party forever and I would have a much more vital role if I left the party – I could contribute more so that was what it ultimately boiled down to I think.

Q So when you say “constrained”, what do you mean?

Well it’s very complex, I mean normally one would expect when you are in a party you’ve got more like-minded people and you get strength from that and that was what I was hoping for initially, but I think we have to accept the fact that the MDP as it is, is not really a party formed around a particular political philosophy.

The binding force had been and continues to be a common goal of opposition to the current regime, which really is not a very viable political philosophy to my mind and I think as the Party is settling down the differences in political opinion are becoming more pronounced and at the end of the day what happens is there just isn’t enough room in the party for the divergent number of views as to how we should proceed, what should be the tactics and strategy.

So it’s always one or a couple of viewpoints which will dominate over the others and the other viewpoints then do not have enough room to operate within the Party. So increasingly I have found that my views have become a bit more isolated in the overall complex and therefore by remaining in the party I have always had to take a back foot and not been able to put my ideas into practice because I don’t believe that for as long as I remain the Party I should go and do my own thing, and if it comes to a point where it is not possible for me to sell my ideas within the Party it really means that the Party philosophy is not concordant with mine and it is time to leave and make your own way.

So it is not really any dissatisfaction with any particular people within the Party or any discord within the Party. I still see the people within the Party as my very good friends and colleagues and still working towards a common goal but maybe the paths that we have chosen differ too much to be working together as one party.

Q. But presumably in this sort of situation, where a society and a political system is trying hard to effectively allow democratic elections and a new government and so on, the mainstream opinion has been that it’s a good idea to have one large opposition party which has a wide enough base of support that it can realistically challenge the Government, and by leaving don’t you run a risk of weakening that one bloc?

I think that’s one legitimate way of looking at it but I think we should also be a little bit more creative in looking beyond the immediate.

I think what we are talking about here is fundamental differences in the approach that we take, so I like to think more optimistically, in that by making this division we are now in a better position, in a stronger position in that we will be attacking the regime on different fronts, whereas before the government has had to just try and focus all its attention into containing MDP.

If there are more people outside the MDP working towards the same things but in different ways than the Government will become extended more and that process will become more vulnerable to different points of attack if you like.

So I think that while it appears good to be one large bloc and appear very formidable by distributing that mass and bulk and power around him instead of just focussing on one point it has its advantages.

And the second thing is I think MDP has just become too large and too cumbersome. If you look at the past year or so, you see increasingly the MDP has had greater and greater difficulty in leading the Party towards common objectives towards a common goal and I think it’s a natural process of disintegration, if you like, and the longer we try to contain it the more energy we will be putting into simply containing the Party and that takes a lot of resources which we could be using to put the pressure on the government.

So overall I don’t think it’s a negative thing and foresee even more breakaways from the MDP in the near future.

Q. So is it fair to talk of a split in the MDP between those who advocate a kind of consensual approach, where they work within the system and within the parliament to achieve change, and those who see their role in dissent as more active, that they need to bring the people on to the streets and they need to protest and be seen to protest?

I don’t think the line between activism and the more legal type of protest, I don’t think it’s such a clear dichotomy there. I mean I have always been a strong advocate of trying to achieve the objectives through the parliamentary process but at the same time I have always supported public action, street action, demonstrations, because I think these two have to go together.

If you analyse the circumstances in which change has come about in the past you can see three elements at work:

One is the grass roots public action, the second is a strong parliament – opposition in the parliament and the third is the involvement of the international community.

We have actually for a period had all three elements quite strong in its presence and yet we have not really done it and that is because I think there has been poor coordination and poor alignment, taking more independent phases if you like and we need to bring those together and often the reason why this coordination has been difficult has been internal disputes within the party as to how we bring those about.

But now if those elements somehow separate out a little bit it will be easier to bring an external coordination I think because there isn’t that element of people being wary of each other, I mean it’s quite clear where it was going.

Q So what would you say was your political ideology, philosophy compared with that of the MDP?

As a political philosophy, ideology, I would subscribe to a social, liberal kind of ideology and I think MDP also espouses many of those elements so I suppose in that way it’s not all that different.

But my own outlook is not so conservative as some of the other elements within the MDP but at the same time not as radical as some other elements as well.

I believe strongly in dialogue, I believe strongly in consistency and I believe in taking a long-term perspective. But I believe the dominant ideology in the MDP has been short-term and it seems like that the main objective now has become the removal of Gayoom rather than reforming the system.

Some see the removal of Gayoom as a prerequisite for reform, whereas I see the reform process will ultimately lead to the automatic elimination of Gayoom from the picture.

So these are two very different approaches. I don’t see yet any way for us to get rid of Gayoom except through a free and fair election, but there will be others who say you can’t have a free and fair election with Gayoom in place. But I think it is possible and I think we just need to have a long term strategy where Gayoom just can’t…we have to put him into the corner through that approach, and ultimately he will just have to give in because we just have to eliminate all choices for him.

Q. So I guess the big question everyone is asking, then, is does this mean you are going to form a new party – a kind of third large party?

[Pauses] I, um, I think most probably yes.

I am still not in a position to say outright yes I am forming a party because I don’t believe a political party can be formed by one person. I think the formation of a sound political party requires an number of people who subscribe to a common belief and I am sure there are many, many people who subscribe to the kind of beliefs that I have but it’ll take some time, I think, for those people to converge and come together and start thinking about forming a party and all the rest that goes with it.

So yes the logical next step would be the formation of a party. I don’t know when yet, or exactly how I’m going to do it yet.

Q. It seems to me, although you say that you can’t form a party with one person, that a lot of the politics in the Maldives is very personality based and so, in that sense, although you will obviously need more than one person you can form a party around one person. Is that what you intend to do?

I would want to avoid that at all costs, because I don’t think that the long term sustenance and feasibility of a political party will be sound if you do it that way.

Okay, one or a few people will usually lead in these kind of things, but it is very important that whatever party is formed that those who subscribe to the party have to feel the ownership of the party. It has to be their thing otherwise you can’t keep it going.

So I wouldn’t want to, say, collect all the people who support Ibra and go and from Ibra’s party. Rather I would propose to people the kind of philosophy that I believe in and see if there are people who subscribe to that philosophy so that regardless of Ibra the party will, and should, keep going.

Q So how do you see the future of Maldivian politics in the next five years, say?

I think we are at a very critical juncture.

Point number one is I can’t see any way that we can go back to where we were. Second thing is I can’t see any way where we will stand where we are either, so by process of elimination the only thing left is to go forward.

So I think this reform process will continue regardless of elements who might try to stop the process or retard the process. I don’t think it is possible. I think it will just carry on gaining momentum, but there is a fear that unless we are very careful and we manage this properly, the country could go into further chaos. Further destructions of society might occur before things stabilise out and being the small society that we are I don’t know how much of that kind of instability we can absorb and sustain.

And then there is an element where I think for a brief period, at least, we will see increased corruption at the political level as those with vested interests try to retain what they have and make more. And then there are others who are trying to prevent that so there might be a period of that coming in, but I am an optimistic person by nature and I think that at the end of the day, the people will win and we will be better off in spite of all the difficulties we are going through now.

I think there is going to be political turbulence after Gayoom when that happens, and out of that turbulence hopefully some order will emerge. I am sure it will. Things will stabilise out because it is not the nature of Maldivian people to be very vengeful. Maldivians tend to forget these things quite quickly and get on with life; they bounce back into things quite quickly so as this couple of, maybe two, three years we might have some sort of uncertainty.

After that I think things should stabilise then and I think we will emerge into a young democracy and then, I think our greatest challenge will not be the removal of Gayoom, out greatest challenge will be to manage the affairs of the state in a democratic fashion after Gayoom.

Thank you.