Gayoom faction in ruling PPM has lost two more of the eight MPs that had backed them against President Abdulla Yameen in the latest tussle in the Maldives.
In a none-too-unexpected reversal of early gains, the Gayoom faction in the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has lost two more of the eight MPs that had backed them against President Abdulla Yameen. Gayoom faction spokesperson Ibrahim Shujau and Ahmed 'Red Wave' Saleem returned to the Yameen leadership only hours after criticising the President for harassing his political opponents.
The recent 'defections' have brought the parliamentary strength of the Gayoom faction down to five, in the first fortnight of their withdrawing parliamentary support to President Yameen. One other MP had returned to the Yameen faction early on, after pledging his support to the faction led by the President's half-brother and long-term predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who was also the party’s founder-chair until the courts removed him from the post a month ago.
Adding to the 'internal' party embarrassment of the Gayoom, Jumhooree Party (JP) leader Gasim Ibrahim declared that they were not supporting any move for a no-trust vote against Parliament Speaker Abdulla Maseeh, in turn a Yameen loyalist. The no-trust move was a PPM-G initiative, which was expected to garner JP's backing after Gasim had appeared in public with Gayoom, and talked about the future health of Maldivian democracy.
Gasim's 'siding' with Gayoom after the PPM split was considered a direct criticism of the Yameen leadership. The no-trust move in turn was sought to be the 'collective first step' before seeking an impeachment of President Yameen. The Speaker's defeat required only a simple majority in the 85-member House. It was hence seen as the precursor to an impeachment motion against Yameen, requiring two-thirds majority.
It’s all not without logic in the contemporary Maldivian political context. There is a perception — unsupported by facts, as yet — that any first win for the divided anti-Yameen camp, even if collectively, would help them rope in more MPs, ahead of any impeachment move against the President. Now with a series of reversals of this strategy producing negative results, Yameen's impeachment way ahead of the 2018 presidential polls seems to be a non-starter, still.
Equally important, by roping in Gasim and the JP, the Gayoom camp seemed wanting to hand over a fait accompli viz Yameen's impeachment to the main Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), led by former President Mohammed 'Anni' Nasheed. In turn, this would have meant that the MDP and Nasheed might have lost the first claim to a common 'replacement' for Yameen, if and when the impeachment happened.
With the Gayoom camp's support in the People’s Majlis, or Parliament, coming down to five, and Gasim too evincing no immediate interest in seeking Speaker Maseeh's removal, the 'Yameen impeachment' project itself might have received yet another setback. In their turn earlier, the MDP and Nasheed had launched similar projects, both through street-protests and parliamentary initiatives, to unseat Yameen, but got nowhere.
Pre-positioning prospective allies to the MDP-Nasheed's advantage and to the other's incremental political disadvantage was among the reasons why their own project did not even take off. From December 2014, the MDP worked on the assumption that a massive street-protest could gather its own momentum, forcing PPM parliamentarians to back an impeachment motion against Yameen, with Gasim accepting the Speakership and acting as 'interim President' for 60 days without future ambitions during fresh elections.
It's anybody's guess, how the much-experienced Gayoom faction made all wrong calculations that a much-less politically-exposed MDP had done in its time — the latter, both when in office and afterwards. The recent 'return' from PPM-G to the Yameen camp occurred after a State-owned company threatened to seize a plot of land leased to MP Saleem’s grocery chain, with the other parliamentarian, Shujau is a manager.
If nothing else, immediately after JP's Gasim had identified with Nasheed's MDP and the Adhalaath Party in their combined effort, Government institutions sought immediate return of $90 million that his Villa Group had owed them. A shrewd politician himself, Gasim's troubles ended only after he quit the Opposition combine and returned to the Yameen fold.
Hence, Gasim's interim identification with Gayoom should have caused eye-brows to rise, unless he too had bought into the various 'defection' theories doing the rounds in capital Male. With the present set-back for the divided Opposition all over again, it’s back to square one, and 'advantage Yameen.' It remains to be seen how the Opposition parties regroup, if at all, and if and when they would at all be successful, well ahead of Elections 2018.
All of it means that both the Nasheed-MDP and the Gayoom-PPM are on equal footing, losing their game and game-plans to Yameen in a series of stand-alone initiatives that were anyway bound to end in failure. Now, they would have to lick their wounds, suffered separately, and think and act together, if at all they had to even dream of succeeding to replace Yameen at the helm. Mutual suspicions and over-ambitions are the collective-spoiler, and the two sides would find it extremely difficult to overcome it all.
In between, Yameen seemed to be counting still on having the Gayoom faction back on his side, and on his terms. At a public rally in the past fortnight, he had called upon the party boss to return to the fold. He has also kept the party chair vacant. Though Gayoom rejected the proposal post-haste lest it should sow seeds of suspicions in his own camp, the more recent events may have made other MPs and party leaders on his side too more desperate than earlier.
According to social media reports, like leaderships before him, the Yameen camp seems to have tied down MPs and party leaders to huge bank-loans and land-allotment, requiring them to return the same, if pressed through legal and/or judicial means. Gasim had been a victim of the same, under Gayoom and even Nasheed presidencies. Despite its pro-democracy credentials, the Nasheed Government was known to have (even) written to international banks in the country to 'pressure' Gasim to behave — or, ask him to repay huge credits — though the Villa Group was not known to be a habitual defaulter.
The fact however remains that not all MPs and leaders owe their business or land interests to an incumbent President or Government. In many cases, the parliamentary or party positions had chased them, but later on they had become prisoners of their own making and of circumstances. Expecting the MPs to join any first move against an incumbent is not on — not under contemporary Maldivian political environment and circumstances. This too has had no reference to the nation's recent democracy credentials, or whatever remains.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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