Neither Yameen, nor his ministers have explained how getting eternally indebted to China would help in the economic independence of Maldives.
With politics in Maldives deadlocked, key questions in the minds of every Maldivian are: Where is the international community? What is its intention? What are their capabilities in the given context? Have they ever matched their intention and capabilities to the ground realities?
It is not only the frustrated, four-party combined opposition — their jailed leaders and cadres — asking these questions. Any keen observer in the Maldivian scene will reflect the same before any interlocutor from the 'international community' (read: West).
There are no answers either. Rather, there were no answers to begin with, as the West too, like their friends in the opposition, Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) did not ask one another, or the self, the right questions. It is only on the basis of which alone any 'composite campaign' against incumbent President Abdulla Yameen could have been mounted when they launched it on December 2014, a year after he had come to power.
Truth be acknowledged, even at this late hour: There was absolutely no provocation for the three-party combined opposition to launch the protest, infamous for its coincidence with the worst-ever drinking water crisis in Male. It also led to avoidable suspicions about the intentions and methods of the opposition, open criticism about their misplaced ambitions, and consequent priorities in public life.
Male houses a third of the archipelago-nation's 350,000+ population. Desalinated water was the only source of potable/drinking water, other than a limited quantity of imported drinking water bottles. As long-time friends and immediate neighbours, India and Sri Lanka rushed drinking water, to meet the immediate situation, caused by an unprecedented fire in a local desalination plant.
Bangladesh and China — the latter ever-waiting on the wings to prove its worthiness — also rushed water-assistance as distance commanded. In the current international political discourse on Maldives (which seems to have become rare and distanced), the questions never being asked are: if things on the ground would have been different, if the opposition MDP and its former President Mohammed Nasheed precipitated the politico-constitutional crisis and chose a wrong time.
Nothing can explain or defend the current conduct of the Yameen government and its inherent, institutionalised distaste for democratic norms; the political opposition and journalist critics, who have been at the receiving end. It had started with MDP's Nasheed, against whom the 'Judge Abdulla Abduction Case' was reopened, converted into a terrorism-charge, and he was jailed for thirteen years, denying any chance to contest presidential polls.
The West has since forgotten how they were half-hearted in studying and understanding the situation, taking MDP friends from an earlier era as gospel. They assumed that having tamed the last of the pre-democracy Presidents in Yameen’s half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, they could bring around anyone in his place.
In the process, they miscalculated the efficacy of President Yameen in getting what he wanted. So much so, Yameen also got rid of his electoral partners from 2013, namely, the Jumhooree Party (JP) of billionaire-politician Gasim Ibrahim and religion-centric Adhaalath Party (AP). He has since split the ruling party of which half-brother Gayoom was the chair, and has put the latter's son Faaris, a future-day presidential aspirant, on trial for alleged acts of crime and corruption. The list of 'Yameen's victims' seems endless. Worse still, Maldivians too seem to have lost count and possibly interest.
It is anyone's guess why the UK kept insisting on involvement in Maldivian domestic affairs ever since the one-time Protectorate forced peaceful Independence. If the UK was acting as a friend for the whole of Europe and other western powers with the US on top, there is no knowing if it did take the India and Sri Lanka as much into confidence, as was required at the time.
If India's Gandhi showed them the way through Satyagraha and Ahimsa, Maldivians under then Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir improved upon it, by resorting to the Indian leader's proactive, participatory 'constructive work programme' and helped widen the runway to Male Airport. Possibly India — from a political, philosophy point of view, and Sri Lanka as a neighbour with whom most Maldivian leaders of all hues are comfortable — may have made the democratisation process during the Gayoom era more balanced and mutually beneficial for all stakeholders.
Going by the success recorded by the Westminster House Accord on democratisation signed at the British High Commissioner's residence in Colombo when Gayoom was in power, the West glossed over the discrepancies and deficiencies that they had let creep into the 2008 Constitution. The anticipated election of Mohammed Nasheed as the first democratic President meant the end of the process, Maldives and Maldivians were however only beginning it.
The international community's interest and involvement in the Maldives since has been in fits and starts. And as elsewhere, they felt comforted viewing the nation through the coloured glasses of their friend Nasheed. With the result, they failed to notice the democratic incursions of his short-lived regime (2008-12), including the 'Judge Abdulla Case', and the arrests of Yameen and JP's Gasim (then in the opposition).
Having failed to apply the correctives when needed the most, the international community has since taken to condemning the Yameen regime, but to no avail. Yameen has continually proved, at least until now, that he is equal to the challenge, unlike his half-brother Gayoom. When the West used the Commonwealth to push him to the wall on the human rights front (read: freedom for Nasheed), he simply quit the Commonwealth.
The two presidential successors of Nasheed, starting with his one-time Vice President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, have since armed themselves with a new foreign policy that Yameen inaugurated in January 2014, declaring 'economic independence' as the nation's new goal to stall 'international interference'. The veiled reference at the time, and the unmentioned goal of the new document was to try and reduce, if not cease, continued economic dependence on the Indian neighbour, post the GMR fiasco.
Even as India was seeking to provide economic muscle to the smaller economic neighbour through the much-fancied privatised FDI route, and thus the choice of the GMR investments in the Male international airport expansion project, the latter seemed to have read the brief wrong, even after being faced with implementation plans on the ground. The Yameen camp readily used it as a post-facto justification to befriend the Chinese adversary of India, to balance off any 'India-centric' western interference in the nation's internal affairs.
Economic Minister Mohammed Saeed made a veiled reference to the prevailing situation recently, when he said that 'economic slavery' was the biggest fear post-2013. The government has now eliminated that fear. Without mincing words, he said that the Male-Hulhumale sea-bridge to the airport-island and the second runway — both funded by China — were among the "pillars that will defend the Independence of the country."
Neither Yameen, nor his ministers have explained how getting eternally indebted to China would help in the economic independence of Maldives. If the idea was for Maldives to have a dependable international ally ready to use the UN veto-vote without asking questions, facilitating Chinese funding has helped.
Maldives was watching intently at neighbouring Sri Lanka, where the West, with Indian acquiescence, got the UNHRC resolution on an 'international probe' into war crimes charges, passed without having to take it to the UNSC. Both Maldives and China are alert to the possibilities since. Maldivians should still be looking at Sri Lanka all the same for lessons on how China got the uneconomical and unviable Hambantota project loans effortlessly, converted into stakes and shares without the Sri Lankan owner, or the strategically-targeted Indian neighbour, or the rest of the world knowing the logic and logistics behind it all!
There is no escaping the international community dealing with the Yameen leadership rather than seeking to lead against it. They have a lesson or two to learn from the Norwegian interlocutor in the case of war torn Sri Lanka, where they took lessons from the earlier Indian experience and also kept India in the loop. What the West provided the Nasheed leadership was defenders of his personal right, not facilitators and the negotiators of the kind that the UN subsidiaries did when Waheed was in power — and whose efforts and contributions — none other than Nasheed torpedoed from within.
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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