Analysis
N Sathiya Moorthy
With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent successful, three-nation South-East Asia visit, which included Indonesia, an even more surprising element has been added to New Delhi’s strained ties with the South Asian neighbour, Maldives. India had committed to voting for the Indian Ocean archipelago for the prestigious Asia-Pacific non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC), due this month (June 2018), but Indonesia has become a more recent and even more determined and possibly more legitimate claimant for the Indian vote.
Independent of being the four ‘Islamic nation’ in the immediate SAARC conglomerate, Maldives is India’s ‘soft under-belly’ in geo-strategic terms, after Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. With a substantial Muslim population in the country, India is even more aware that Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population. It has also been thus that India has treated both nations all along, but may not have expected the two to contest for the same UNSC seat in the same year, and campaign for the same Indian vote, as Maldives and Indonesia have done now.
India’s problem does not end there. It rather begins there. As is known and acknowledged, New Delhi has made ‘democracy issues’ in Maldives a touchstone for restoring normal times with the administration of President Abdulla Yameen. With presidential polls in the country due in the coming weeks/months, and India having identified with the anti-Yameen Joint Opposition (JO), with most leaders self-exiled or jailed, an Indian vote at the UNSC could sent out a ‘counter-signal’, though possibly unintended.
At the External Affairs Minister’s annual news conference in New Delhi recently, incumbent Sushma Swaraj underlined that “ties with Maldives are not broken and cannot be broken”. But in the same vein, the Minister also declared that she could not accept Maldivian counterpart Mohammed Asim’s invitation to her to visit the country until Male acted upon India’s democracy prescriptions for that nation, going beyond ending the ‘State of Emergency’ declaration on 5 February.
It is unclear when Indonesia actually approached India for its vote, or if New Delhi had conveyed any idea that could be construed as a ‘commitment’. However, Indonesian leaders are reported to have taken up their case with PM Modi when he visited the country late in June.
Apart from being a key-player in the ASEAN and the larger South-East Asian context in terms of India’s ‘Act East Policy’, given the ‘China factor’ and the related South China Sea conundrum, Indonesia is also becoming increasingly relevant to India’s strategic calculations. A defence MoU was among the 13 agreements the two nations signed during the Prime Minister’s Jakarta visit.
At the moment, the immediate Indian interest for building up relations with both nations owes to the ‘China factor’. India wants to expand strategic relations with Indonesia as a part of the larger ‘Act SEA’ policy involving all the ASEAN nations, in a bid to scuttle China’s expansionism. New Delhi wants to retain whatever is possible of the years and decades of Male’s friendship, precisely for the very same reasons.
The competing questions before India, in a way, are: Will Indonesia and ASEAN feel hurt and ‘remember’ India for not doing enough if it were to vote for Maldives? Will an Indian vote at this stage help halt, if not outright reverse, Maldives’ ‘fast-track tilt’ towards China?
Though not officially, India has been blamed for not standing by its commitment on UNSC vote in the past. A glaring and none-too-distant example was India promising support for Sri Lanka’s Jayantha Dhanapala for the UN Secretary-General but went back on it, when native Shashi Tharoor belatedly decided to throw his hat into the ring.
Both were veteran UN diplomats, having retired as Under Secretary-General in their time. If the issue did not escalate, it was because of the P-5’s choice of South Korean Ban Ki-moon through traditional ‘straw-ballot’. Both Dhanapala and Tharoor did not have to face a formal election in the UN General Assembly, and thus each other, for India to take a call.
Though India’s UPA-I Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took both the decisions, nations are institutions by themselves, and their decisions are carried forward – and remembered, either way. Yet, yet another belated reversal of the Indian decision now in the case of another nation under different bilateral equations would still be remembered, especially in the South Asian neighbourhood.
The UNSC vote comes in the midst of Maldives’ controversial preparations for an even more controversial presidential election, due every five years. The first round is slated for September, and if required, a second, run-off round the next month. Under the 2008 ‘democratic Constitution’, the victor has to obtain 50 percent of the votes cast – but independent of voter turn-out, which in the past has been upward of 90 percent, both in 2008 and 2013.
In primaries round that could be dubbed only as ‘less-than-farcical’, the ruling PPM of President Abdulla Yameen has nominated him for a second run. The Opposition MDP has out-done it since by having jailed and self-exiled former President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed re-nominated, again in a single-candidate primaries claiming close to 90 percent turn-out and around 85 percent approval-rating, working out to 44,000 votes, for the lone candidate.
Yameen began the long run-up to the primaries over four years ago by thwarting the possible chances of prospective rivals in the primaries, by targeting predecessor and half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Defence Minister Col Mohamed Nazim and Home Minister Umar Naseer, one way or the other. In the name of promoting democracy within the MDP, as much as propagating for the restoration of the same in the country as a whole, Nasheed has got himself as the lone candidate, and got near-full party endorsement for the same.
Even before the MDP primaries commenced, the nation’s Election Commisison (EC) warned the party against having a ‘convicted person’ as a candidate for the primaries, and also warned of disbanding the party. After the mid-week primaries, held on 30 May, the MDP claimed a unique victory, and against all odds, including browbeating the courts and police, who had seized ballot-boxes, at the EC’s instance.
The EC is expected to pronounce its verdict on the MDP’s future soon, but then the party ‘primaries’ already seemed to have thwarted the much-hyped Opposition unity and their past commitment to fielding a common candidate against incumbent Yameen. In Frankfurt, Germany, Maldives’ Jumhooree Party (JP) leader Ali Waheed came down heavily on the Nasheed-MDP approach to the question of consultations and common candidate without naming them.
Talking to The Hindu in the neighbouring Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, Nasheed reiterated his call for India’s ‘muscular intervention’ to restore democracy in his country. Loaded this one in every which way, the last time Nasheed called for India’s help a couple of months back, he called for ‘armed intervention’, but nothing came out of it. If anything, Nasheed’s call may have been the trigger for to China to caution India publicly to desist from doing anything of the kind.
India has not reacted in any way to Nasheed’s ‘call’, or on the MDP ‘primaries’. The US and the EU lost no time in condemning the EC, police and court intervention as ‘anti-democratic’.
Any EC ban on the MDP could well mean that any chosen party member, if allowed under the law, would have to contest as an ‘Independent’ candidate. With the JP, which has been promised the running-mate status from the beginning, still remaining recognised officially, it would remain to be seen if the party leadership or the EC would permit such a combination under the new circumstances.
The JP and the MDP are having their pre-poll party congress in the third and fourth weeks of this month. It is not unlikely that the JP could take off from where Nasheed had left and declare self-exiled Gasim as the former’s vice-presidential ‘running-mate’ for an election that neither can ‘officially’ contest. Or, either or both parties would have to change their candidates.
In a none-too-surprising development, the Prosecutor-General’s office has declined permission for the police to haul up MDP Leader of the Opposition, Ibrahim Solih or ‘Ibu’ Solih before the criminal court for his participation in the anti-Emergency protests earlier in the year. Ibu, held back for a few days than many others when President Yameen lifted the Emergency, was later granted bail.
Caught between all these still is octogenarian former President Gayoom, who along with elder son and heir-apparent Faaris Maumoon is in prison, facing ‘terrorism charges’ for the ’judicial coup’ that they had supposedly initiated to have Yameen out of power and out of the way. Leave aside the JP, even the MDP does not have any time for Gayoom, whose rebellion against Yameen alone lent character to ‘Opposition unity’.
The courts have declined to shift an ailing Gayoom even to ‘house arrest’ pending his ‘terrorism trial’ that his defence has boycotted since. So much so, none of the MDP gimmickry of the kind nor the continuing international community’s condemnation of Yameen’s methods can, in the ordinary course, stand between Yameen and an ‘elected’ second term. If anything, only a ‘surprise’ common candidate with an unparalleled ‘shock value’ alone can achieve it!
The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter
Joyeeta Bhattacharjee
Bangladesh-India relations got a major boost with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s India visit on 25-26 May. It was a goodwill visit, and became even more special as Hasina restricted her visit to West Bengal, bordering Bangladesh — a State with which the country shares many bonds, including language and culture.
Two major events marked Hasina’s engagements in India. One, she was present at the inauguration of the ‘Bangladesh Bhawan’ in Santiniketan, an education township developed by Nobel literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore where he set up the Viswa Bharati University. The other involved the Kazi Nazrul Islam University, named after Bangladesh’s national poet, conferring honorary D Litt degree on Hasina, at Asansol, also in West Bengal.
It thus remained a social visit, for most parts. It was devoid of any major announcements on issues like ‘Teesta water-sharing’, pending for seven years. The visit thus succeeded in highlighting the deep cultural connection that lies between the two countries, and became a celebration of this unique bond.
The ‘Bangladesh Bhawan’ has been built with funding from the Government of Bangladesh to commemorate Rabindranath Tagore’s links with Bangladesh and also the freedom movement of that country, where India played a stellar role. Tagore, a humanist and a poet, is popular both in India and Bangladesh. Tagore’s songs, “Jana Gana Mana’ and “Sonar Bangla Ami Tomai Bhalobashi” are the national anthems of India and Bangladesh respectively. Tagore thus holds a unique position the world-wide, as no other poet or writer has the national anthems of two nations written by him.
Similarly, Kazi Nazrul Islam, born in Churulia in West Bengal and famous as a rebel poet, had written various songs that inspired India’s freedom movement. Tagore and Kazi Nazrul are two luminaries of Bengali literature, a language common in both West Bengal and Bangladesh. Participating in the ‘Bangladesh Bhawan’ inauguration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the Chancellor of the Viswa Bharati, said that the two nations shared many bonds of unity and Santiniketan was one of the symbols. He also laid emphasis on the cultural bonds between the two countries in a unique soft-power endeavour to re-energise the bilateral ties.
During her visit, Prime Minister Hasina had a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meeting that lasted a little over 30 minutes gave an opportunity for the leaders to discuss the various issues of bilateral interest. The meeting helped the two leaders to express each other’s views on the issues.
One of the major motivations for Hasina to undertake the visit was to garner support for repatriation of Rohingyas. In her speech at Santiniketan, she called for help for the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees who are residing in Bangladesh since August 2017. There has been no official statement of the issue, hence no details about India’s response is not available in the public domain.
However, some media reports claimed that the two countries are on the same page. It is worthwhile to mention here that earlier in May, Sushma Swaraj, the Indian External Affairs Minister, during her visit to Myanmar, categorically stated that India wants the safe and sustainable return of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar.
Another highlight of the visit was Prime Minister Hasina’s meeting with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The meeting assumed greater importance owing to Mamata Banerjee’s objection to the draft Teesta river water sharing agreement between the two countries, which is also seen as a major obstacle to resolving the issue. The agreement could not be signed during then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh in 2011, for the same reason.
The Hasina-Mamata meeting lasted about an hour but did not result in any major declaration. However, it was considered a positive beginning. For Sheikh Hasina, it was a good political message to her home constituency in an election year. It was a major message to the political constituency of Prime Minister Hasina, mainly the secular and non-communal sections, the traditional support base of her Awami League party. There have been some resent among them about the Awami League being seen as tilting towards the rightists because of issues like growing proximity with the Hajajat, increasing number of attacks on the minority community, removal, etc.
The people of Bangladesh are seriously worried about the rise of radicalism in the country. For Bangladeshis, culture and language play a major role in the national identity. With the national election waiting to be held later this year, it may help in wooing the voters. Hence, investing on culture, particularly Tagore and Kazi Nazrul, serve as a major psychic construct of the Bengali identity, and is indeed a prudent move.
The Hasina visit also came as a reassurance for the two countries to work together in enhancing the bilateral relationship, going beyond the routine political prism of gains and losses — a general tendency in the international relations.
The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation
The Afghan Special Forces carried out a rescue operation in the Taliban prison of Kajaki district, located south of the Helmand province in Afghanistan. Upon its completion, hundred and five hostages including women were freed late into the night and weapons such as ten improvised explosive devices, munitions and ten motorcycles were confiscated. Four Talibans and one other militant were killed in the process. The Taliban and the other insurgent groups as yet remain silent on the affair.
Gen John Nicholson, the commander of the US Forces and the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, announced that the HIMAR strike in the southern Helmand has killed almost 50 Taliban leaders, including their ‘shadow-governor’ for the province and a few other commanders. In a separate development, the Afghan Special Forces freed 150 hostages, including women, from a Taliban ‘prison’ in Kajaki district in south Hemland. Elsewhere, in Haska Mina district of Nangarhar, an artillery-strike killed nine ISIS-Khurasan militants, after an earlier air-strike by the US forces had claimed 17 militants.
Hopes of early freedom for jailed Opposition BNP chairperson, Begum Khaleda Zia, was on a yo-yo after the Supreme Court stayed the six-month bail for her, granted by the High Court in two criminal cases. Begum Zia is in jail since February this year after she was convicted in a corruption case and was sentenced to a five-year term. The Supreme Court has granted her bail in the corruption case but she continues to be in the jail since she is facing multiple cases. Her party has alleged cases against her are politically motivated.
India has approved 14 of the 16 projects proposed by Bangladesh for implementation under the second line of credit worth $2 billion. Indian envoy to Dhaka Harsh Vardhan Shringla, met Mashiur Rahman, the prime minister’s economic affairs adviser, this week and discussed the swift implementation of the projects. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed the agreement for the second line of credit during his visit to Dhaka in June 2015. Earlier India has provided $1 billion line of credit to Bangladesh of which $200 million was transformed into grant later. Of the $1 billion, India has disbursed $600 million, including a $200 million grant.
A total of 64 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects worth Nu 34 billion have been allowed in the country since 2002 despite the FDI size remaining lowest in the region. A total of 19 projects were approved in principle in 2017-18 taking the total of such projects to 83. This information was revealed in the FDI Annual Report 2017 that declared India is the largest investor in the manufacturing sector and maximum investments in the service sector came from Singapore and Thailand.
Bhutan has been declared as the SAARC Cultural Capital for the year 2018 and an inauguration ceremony and handicraft exhibition was held to mark the occasion in capital Thimphu on 31 May. The initiative is to give an opportunity to a SAARC member state to showcase their culture and related activities through festivals and cultural programmes throughout the year.
Vajrayana Buddhism has inspired human development from two sources- the governance and the leaders of the country said Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay in his address at the 15th UN Day of Vesak Celebration at Ayutthaya, Thailand on May 25.Tobgay also called on his Thai counterpart Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha where the two prime ministers exchanged views on strengthening bilateral and regional cooperation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 31 May met his newly-elected Malaysian counterpart Mahathir Mohammad and the two leaders had a productive exchange of views on strengthening the strategic partnership. “The two leaders had a productive exchange of views on strengthening our strategic partnership,” MEA spokesperson tweeted after the meeting. With this, Modi possibly became the first major regional and global leader to have met the new Malaysian Prime Minister on his return to power after a gap.
An upgraded version of the Pinaka rocket, with enhanced range and guidance system, was successfully test-fired from Chandipur in Odisha on two successive days, 30-31 May, and was successful, DRDO said. With this, the original unguided Pinaka has become a guidance and control kit, and has helped in enhancing the range and accuracy of the rocket system, with the range to going up from 40 km to 70 km.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Indonesia on 30 May to elevate bilateral ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The two countries condemned terrorism in all its forms, as Modi held “productive discussions” with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. The two countries also signed 15 agreements, including one to boost defence cooperation, and called for freedom of navigation in the strategic Indo-Pacific region. Singapore start-ups can now gain faster entry to India’s start-up ecosystem to form partnerships and co-innovate with Indian entities after State-owned Enterprise Singapore (ESG) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) signed an agreement on Wednesday, a day before Modi’s arrival in the city-State.
After the Election Commission and the civil court ruled the Opposition MDP’s primaries for the September presidential polls with jailed/self-exiled former President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed as the lone candidate, the party is holding its pre-poll congress in the fourth week of June. In turn, the Jumhooree Party (JP), the second strongest partner in the four-party Joint Opposition, has advanced its ‘congress’ by a week, to the third week. Indications are that the two parties might announce their poll strategies after seeming strains when the MDP went ahead with the primaries, knowing full well they were bound to create new legal problems than solving any. On the MDP primaries again, the Government of President Abdulla Yameen, in a statement, criticised the West for backing a party that had violated the Constitution and the law, but without still telling the world the provisions that were thus violated.
The United Nations has stated that Myanmar’s government agreed on 31 May to grant it access to crisis-hit Rakhine state after months of wrangling over how to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees. The access would allow the UN refugee agency to “assess conditions on the ground and carry out protection activities. Myanmar has said it is ready to take back the Rohingya and has traded accusations with Bangladesh over who is responsible for the delay.
Myanmar’s construction ministry has invited expression of interest from local and international firms for a ring road expressway in Yangon. The 47.5-km elevated four-lane road will connect downtown Yangon, Yangon Port, Yangon International Airport, Mingalardon Industrial Park and the Yangon-Mandalay expressway. The firms are to design, engineer, finance, construct, operate and maintain the project through a long-term public-private partnership (PPP) concession agreement. The ministry set 29 June as closing date for sending the expression of interest by the firms.
Myanmar and the government of Yunnan, China will sign a bilateral trade agreement when U Than Myint, Minister of Commerce, visits the Kunming Trade Fair next month. The agreement, once signed, will facilitate the legal export of Myanmar produced agriculture products such as rice and sugar across the Myanmar- China border, said U Khin Maung Lwin, assistant secretary at the Ministry of Commerce. It will also come after years of restrictive trade measures taken by the Chinese in attempts to crack down on illegal border trade.
On the basis of a two-point agreement, the Sangjhiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal (SSFN) is joining Prime Minister K. P Sharma Oli-led government. Correspondingly, two new Ministers have been duly nominated to become a part of the Cabinet. SSFN Chairman Upendra Yadav would be appointed as the Health Minister while law-maker Mohammad IshtiyaqRai will be the new Urban Development Minister.
As the Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN) joins the Federal Government, speculations regarding a government change in Province 2 have been doing the rounds. This has led to the formation of a new power play with realignment in the ‘plain-only province’. Accordingly, there could be a high possibility of Nepal Communist Party (NCP) toppling the present government of Chief Minister Lal Babu Raut.
Parliamentarians belonging to the ruling Nepal Communist Party have criticised the budget for 2018-19, presented by Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada. Some of the important areas of concern involve the Local Infrastructure Development Partnership Programme which replaces the previous Constituency Infrastructure Development Programme and Constituency Development Programme among others.
Iran has warned Pakistan of the Islamic State relocating along the border with Afghanistan. According to official sources a senior Iranian official informed the delegation led by Attorney General for Pakistan Ashtar Ausaf Ali that Iran had credible intelligence of Daesh and its head Abu Bakar being relocated to Afghanistan. The Iranian official also stated that the US and Israel intend to turn Pakistan and Iran into another Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Prior to information from Iran the Pakistani Foreign Office had already started questioning Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Russia about increasing IS presence along the borders. Now, it is concerned by US backing the Daesh.
While Pakistan lamented India’s efforts to make the Indus ater treaty dysfunctional, it was hopeful that the World Bank Board of Directors would ask India to make changes in its design of the Kishanganga dam and pay reparations to Pakistan. However, the statement by the Board of Directors has declared that World Bank remained committed to working with both parties but its role was limited to appointment of experts to resolve the issue. Under this ruling the functioning of the dam will continue unabated and Pakistan will not be able to obtain any concession from India till a fresh round of arbitration.
The national security advisers of both Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed in a joint meeting that sincere and thorough implementation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS) was required to bring peace between the two countries. According to an official statement, the two sides held an in-depth exchange of views on matters pertaining to bilateral co-operation as well as regional security situation.
Reviving ruling partner SLFP’s attacks on Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP, President Maithiripala Sirisena has said that but for sticking on to the latter, his party would not have lost the February local government polls this badly. The Sirisena attack came days after PM Ranil reportedly advised party colleagues not to attack the President or the SLFP ally any more, and all issues would be sorted out at the ‘highest level’. In his turn, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa commented that with Sirisena doing their job, his SLPP does not have to campaign separately.
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N Sathiya Moorthy, “Holding the flock together or what”, The Island, 27 May 2018
Afghanistan: Sohini Bose
Bangladesh: Dr Joyeeta Bhattacharjee
Bhutan: Mihir Bhonsale
India: Parth Giri and Ketan Mehta
Maldives & Sri Lanka: N Sathiya Moorthy
Myanmar: Sreeparna Banerjee
Nepal: Sohini Nayak
Pakistan: Mayuri Banerjee
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