The run-up to the upcoming presidential polls in the Maldives will determine the shape of things to come in the future, with far-reaching implications for India, for bilateral relations between the two countries and the Indian Ocean region. This became evident at the end of a candid discussion that a high-level team of the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had with a section of Indian intellectuals at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), on Thursday, 10 July 2008.
The run-up to the upcoming presidential polls in the Maldives will determine the shape of things to come in the future, with far-reaching implications for India, for bilateral relations between the two countries and the Indian Ocean region. This became evident at the end of a candid discussion that a high-level team of the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had with a section of Indian intellectuals at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), on Thursday, 10 July 2008.
Mr Mohammed Nasheed, popularly known as ‘Anni’, the party’s candidate for the presidential polls, now scheduled to be held on or before 10 October, headed the MDP team. Other members of the five-member team comprised, Mr Ibrahim Hussain Zaki, former Maldivian Minister and ex-Secretary-General of SAARC, Mr. Ahmed Naseem, former diplomat and now MDP representative for the UK, Europe and the US, Mr. Hassan Afeef, the MDP parliamentary group leader, and Mr. Mohammed Zuhair, who runs the MDP office in Colombo. A day earlier, the MDP team had addressed a similar interaction at the ORF Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, en route to New Delhi.
Mr. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has been the president of Maldives for 30 years. His current term comes to an end in November, and he has already announced his intention to seek re-election. Opposition political parties were only legalized in Maldives in 2005 in the aftermath of protests and rioting in 2003 after the death of a prisoner in police custody. The MDP was the first party to be registered under the new scheme, and conducted intra-party elections earlier in the year to choose their presidential candidate.As a result of increasing international pressure, Gayoom eventually agreed to a "roadmap" for democratic reforms. The existing Constitution concentrates virtually dictatorial power in the President’s hands. The proposed new Constitution, recently sent by the Special Majlis to Gayoom for ratification, proposes far reaching changes towards a genuinely democratic system, and clips the President’s powers drastically. The worry is whether or not Gayoom will surrender his powers without a fight. In response to the increasing desire for change Gayoom has recently embarked on a campaign of intimidation and obstruction against his political opponents.
The next three months are crucial. Gayoom has 90 days to ratify the new constitution or to send it back to the Special Majlis proposing his own amendments. The President’s amendments require a simple majority in the 113-member body, which contains a substantial number of Gayoom’s nominees and the members of his cabinet. Adoption of anti democratic amendments is likely to stoke unrest in an atmosphere of hightened democratic expectations. On the other hand, rejecting the President’s proposed amendments would require a two third majority in the Special Majlis. This is out of reach. A deadlock on the new constitution would mean that the Presidential elections would take place under the existing constitution, that Gayoom’s sweeping powers would remain and that the years of effort to bring democracy to Maldives would have come to naught. The situation could get messy.
Mr. Nasheed and Mr. Zaki were of the view that India should do more to encourage the democratic process in their country. “We are here to urge the Government of India to use its good offices to ensure that President Gayoom ratifies the amended Constitution in time, to ensure that the presidential poll process is not derailed” Gayoom is widely considered to have the full backing of India. The MDP delegation expressed their puzzlement and disappointment that, despite its own widely admired democratic system, official representatives of India had not reached out to democratic elements in the Maldives. They doubted if this could be in India’s own long term interest. They were happy that an independent think tank like ORF had arranged a broadly attended interaction with the MDP delegation and this appeared to have led to some members of the Indian government also agreeing to meetings with them.
The MDP leader said that his party was against the radicalization of the Maldivian society. As a ‘Baathist leader’ educated in Cairo, President Gayoom was the chief cleric in the country and had encouraged radicalization. He questioned the belief that President Gayoom represented ‘moderate Islam’. In this context, Mr. Nasheed acknowledged that certain radical groups had occupied some of the islets in the country. “We know who they are,” he said and said that they could be weaned away from their ways in the same way that they were being indoctrinated now. “I do not want my wife or daughter to go around in a veil,” he said. . As for the MDP’s overall political philosophy, he said that its most fundamental platform was the promotion of individual political, social and other rights and freedoms, rather than subordinating them to societal or group rights and interests.
MDP Presidential candidate Nasheed came across as a very impressive, articulate and thoughtful leader, despite being not much more than forty years old, of which six have been in jail for the cause of democratisation of the Maldives. His responses to searching questions from the audience were frank and friendly. He felt that a Chinese military base in the Maldives should not be permitted in the interest of stability and balance in the Indian Ocean region, though he clarified that , as far as he was aware, there was no such Chinese facility in the Maldives yet. “Maldives will not alter the strategic balance in the Indian Ocean region,” Mr. Nasheed said,
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