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Published on Mar 23, 2018
State of Emergency has been extended because of no change in the circumstances following the 1 February order which threatened national security of Maldives.
Yameen lifts Maldives Emergency, Nasheed calls it 'New Normal'

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen on Thursday allowed the 45-day long ‘State of Emergency’ to lapse, but not before getting a predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and two sitting Supreme Court Justices remanded on ‘terrorism charges’, until the end of the trial. Simultaneously, the government also got MDP Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mohammed Ibrahim Solih, or Ibu Solih, a possible Joint Opposition (JO) candidate for the September presidential polls, remanded for a week after the end of the Emergency.

It’s a cruel joke on the septuagenarian Maumoon Gayoom, a half-brother of Yameen, as the anti-terror laws were brought up a year after the failed coup bid in 1998, when he was in power. Along with jailed Chief Justice Abulla Saeed and Justice Ali Hameed, Gayoom has now been charged with bribery and conspiracy to overthrow the elected government. Solih, a long-time friend of jailed and self-exiled former President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, was jailed for participating in an anti-Yameen, anti-Emergency rally last Friday, though most other participants through the month-long protests have since been freed.

“I, with the power vested upon me as President of the Republic of Maldives in reference to Article 260 of the Constitution, determine an end to the State of Emergency,” Yameen said in a statement, read out by Prosecutor-General Azima Shakoor on State Television, PSM, on Thursday noon. “Upon the advice of the security services and in an effort to promote normalcy, the President has decided to lift the state of Emergency,” Azima Shakoor added.

Reiterating his earlier justification(s), Yameen, in the statement, also said that the “State of Emergency was declared due to the threat to the independence and sovereignty of the country following the Supreme Court order on 1 February, and the events which followed. It’s clear the actions of those involved (in issuing the 1 February order) created a huge threat to the independence of Maldives and were treasonous to the highest degree.” The President said he extended the State of Emergency due to no change to the circumstances following the 1 February order which threatened the national security of Maldives.

According to SunOnline, Attorney-General Mohamed Anil said those involved in issuing the Supreme Court order have now been investigated and charged for the crimes. He said authorities were still investigating the case. “As you know, the order issued on 1 February by Supreme Court by two of the court’s judges, Abdulla Saeed and Ali Hameed who had criminal intentions, was a huge atrocity involving criminal actions, bribery, and undue influence involving politicians and State officials,” said Anil, adding that the security forces had worked hard to ensure independence and safety of the public.

Better strategist

In an early reaction, MDP’s Nasheed said that Yameen lifted the Emergency (only) because he “now has no need for it”. In a statement, Nasheed said that Yameen “imposed the State of Emergency to over-run the Judiciary and the Legislature, and used it to unlawfully arrest Parliament Majority Leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed along with SC Justice Ali Hameed, and all remaining opposition leaders.” In a specific reference, Nasheed said that Yameen “also used unlawful State of Emergency powers to hold hostage Ibrahim Siyad Gasim,” the son of jailed Jumhooree Party (JP) founder Ibrahim Gasim, now in self-exile in Germany.

In this context, Nasheed said that President Yameen has announced a “New Normal” for the Maldives — authoritarian rule as a puppet-state controlled by China. “It is sad that the international community has still not got their act together, but we assure all democracy , human rights and freedom loving people of the world that we will not give up, we will fight against the odds and we will overcome,” Nasheed, the nation’s first President under the multi-party democracy Constitution of 2008, added.

Nasheed may have a point, yes, but there is no denying the domestic JO’s inability to oust Yameen through street-protests as they had hoped when they started it all, rather premature, in December 2014, only a year after the latter had come to power. This meant that Yameen, even otherwise a better strategist, could settle down, and also take out one adversary after another from within the JO, which was still in a formative stage, what with Gayoom, now in prison, still heading Yameen’s ruling People’s Party of Maldives (PPM), that he alone had founded.

These inherent limitations of the domestic opposition, especially of the MDP and Nasheed’s instinct-driven decisions, came to bear upon the international community, especially the West, when they got even more involved than on every previous day. This also meant that the West, including the UN and the US, were always on the back-foot without realising or acknowledging the same, when in terms of tactics, too, Yameen was streets ahead, getting his local adversaries, and their overseas backers and sympathisers where he wanted them than the other way round.

Credible restoration 

Without much loss of time, India promptly handed down what could be termed a ‘qualified’ welcome to the Yameen decision. “We welcome the revocation of the State of Emergency in the Maldives,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement. The statement added: “While this is one step towards addressing the issues related to the prevailing political situation in that country, a number of concerns expressed by the international community still remain to be addressed.”

Seeking freedom for all political leaders, including MDP’s Nasheed without mentioning anyone by name, the statement “called upon the Government of Maldives to restore all Articles of the Constitution, to allow the Supreme Court and other branches of the judiciary to operate in full independence, to promote and support the free and proper functioning of Parliament, to implement the Supreme Court's Full Bench order of 1 February 2018 and to support a genuine political dialogue with all opposition parties. It is important for the Government of the Maldives to ensure credible restoration of the political process, as well as the rule of law, before the elections are announced this year.”

It remains to be seen how the Yameen leadership reacts to the Indian statement, in word and/or deed, or how it intends taking forward the ‘routinely-offered’ dialogue process, which is stuck in the denial of JO’s continued demand for UN presence and participation. During the SoE, the Maldivian Election Commission announced that it would open nominations for the presidential polls in September, with the first-round polls due in October. The question remains if the Maldivian Government/courts were to lift the conviction and sentence against Nasheed and Gasim, but without restoring the former’s right to contest the presidential polls. Gasim, like Gayoom, cannot contest the polls, both having crossed the 65-year upper age-limit that Yameen fixed with parliamentary support from Nasheed’s MDP.

Needless to point out, neither MDP, nor the larger JO has since moved any constitutional amendment to reverse the law, even if there were/are no real hopes of the same being voted in by the present Parliament. There is also no clarity if under the circumstances, Nasheed were to return after withdrawal of terrorism charges, but is tried again under ordinary criminal laws in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’, all over again.

The technical question also remains if Yameen were to implement the 1 February order, and yet try Gayoom, parliamentarian-son Faaris, Gasim’s son Siyad, and the two SC judges, now under detention — with at least three of them already charged in courts under ‘terror laws’. The fact that Yameen has not yet forced out ‘resignations’ from the two SC Justices in detention, and is going through the ‘due processes’ (?) as he dictated during the Emergency, and now afterwards, could well indicate his line of thinking, still.

Special envoy?

In the second half of the extended Emergency, a section of the Maldivian media, claimed without either follow-up or reiteration, had indicated an Indian desire to send an envoy but without positive response from Male. In context, India is still better-placed than the West to talk about the need for restoring normalcy and ensuring continued political stability in the immediate neighbourhood. India’s concerns about possible ‘Chinese interference’ in the region may not bear the same diplomatic weight with Yameen now as earlier — more so after Beijing’s on-record performance after the 1 February Maldivian SC order.

A week ahead of Yameen lifting the SoE, Maldives Ambassador to India, Ahmed Mohamed, once again spoke positively about bilateral relations, indicating a possible desire to normalise ties that have strained under the current regime in Male — though without addressing specifics. One way to reach there could be for Maldives to send a ‘special envoy’ of the President to meet with Indian leaders, an exercise that Male could not complete only in this case, soon after the proclamation of Emergency.

At the time, when Maldives Foreign Minister, Dr. Mohamed Asim’s proposed visit to New Delhi could not take place as both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, were not available to receive him on the proposed date, decided at short notice, in turn. Much waters did flow through the Indian Ocean that links/divides the two nations in between, and today, when the Emergency is off in Maldives, and the two governments too cannot but try and ‘normalise’ bilateral ties with medium and long-term interests in mind, that may be where the two could begin.

Yet, all of it could only be a beginning, whether or not India or the UN or any other facilitated and/or participated in an all-party dialogue in Maldives. Leave aside, Yameen’s blunt no to any third-party participation even of the UN kind, the JO, especially the MDP constituent, is not known in the past to adopt a give-and-take approach. The MDP has always followed a take-it-or-leave-it, full-or-none tactics, the party having walked out of the Commonwealth-backed all-party talks called by President Waheed, with Ahmed Mujtaba, an ex-President of the Human Rights Commission of Maldives (HRCM) as convenor.

Invited by the Waheed Government and convenor Mujtaba to head the MDP team, Nasheed would stay away all along. Now, when the Yameen Government says Nasheed is a ‘terror convict’ who has jumped prison and the country, the MDP (still) would have none else to head the delegation. Worse still, Leader of the Opposition, Ibu Solih, who would convey the MDP’s decisions on this score to the Yameen Government in the past, too, is already in prison — though only for a total of nine days — and at least that is now the hope!

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Contributor

N. Sathiya Moorthy

N. Sathiya Moorthy

N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.

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