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There seems to be a need for conferring permanency of sorts for the All-Party Roadmap Talks that is now headed by Ali Mujthaba Mujthaba, aimed not only at national reconciliation but even more at national consensus and consequent national reconstruction.
India has assured Maldives to extend all technical expertise to resolve the current water crisis. India pressed the button after Maldivian Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon called counterpart Sushma Swaraj soon after the seriousness of the crisis was known.
After privatisation, the 'managed float of rufiyaa against the dollar, and other aspects of governance under President Mohammed Nasheed, the Opposition has begun identifying the ills of 'western ways of governance' to individual sectors, and thus drive home their arguments against the Government, even more.
Maldives may have already opened up a national debate on the need for early electoral reforms, with a public assertion by President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik that the Bill that he had returned to Parliament on fixing a minimum membership of 10,000 for political parties to be registered for State funding,
A piquant situation seems to have arisen in Maldives, on the domestic front and also for its relations with India, after the trial court issued a second order to the police to produce former President Mohammed Nasheed, who has been in the Indian High Commission in Male.
That is the question large sections of the people of the Republic of Maldives have been raising as the small country in the Indian Ocean gets ready for the elections to its Parliament (Majlis), which are due to take place on December 31. While the Indian media and analysts have been devoting considerable attention to the coming re-poll (December 26) to elect the next President of Ukraine in order to see whether the elections there would be free a
In Maldives, all the four present and former presidents need to talk to each other, not talk at each other, as has been the case over the past five years if they are serious about constitutional and administrative reforms, in whatever way each one of them visualise.
The sudden and inexplicable way in which an 'investor-row' involving the Indian infrastructure group, GMR, is getting a new twist in recent days in Maldives, if unchecked, has the potential to rock the bilateral relations.
By applying for clemency to President Abdulla Yameen during the month of Ramadan, former President Mohammed 'Anni' Nasheed has put the ball in the court of the Maldives President. Yameen is now under twin-pressure on the Nasheed front.
Not all seems to have been lost to the infant Maldivian democracy. Arch-rivals in the still -unfolding national political drama have come together again, to re-vote two Bills to ensure mandatory assent after President Waheed Hassan Manik had returned them.
The People's Majlis, or Parliament's confirmation of the nomination of Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Deen have taken the punch out of the MDP's argument against the need for a constitutional amendment for facilitating early elections.
Through a deft post facto damage-control, the Government of President Abdulla Yameen seems to have diffused and warded off - at least for the time being - what threatened to be a major diplomatic incident for Maldives, and involving the US and Russia,
Maldive's new President Mohammed Waheed's hands are going to be full as the country is left with a bagful of unresolved crises, each piling upon the other, all of them needing urgent or not-so-urgent attention from the new leadership.
Having kicked off the constitutional deadlock in Maldives, by getting the whole Cabinet resigned, President Nasheed needs to find a wayout of the imbroglio. A snap poll, either for the President or Parliament, or both, are the possibilities.
In Maldives, the stage is now set again for a possible, limited confrontation between the Executive and the Legislature with President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik returning two of the three crucial Bills passed by Parliament.
The Maldivian Democratic Party needs to give the nation and Parliament time to rework the institutional framework as they exist, though not time enough for imbibing in them a new sense of purpose and direction expected of them in a democratic scheme.
Three court orders in two days, one of them overseas, and the Maldives Government and the leadership of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik seem to be in full control of the evolving political situation.
Notwithstanding the recent media leaks on a 'US military base' in Maldives, a decision on whatever that facility be, may have to wait until after the parliamentary polls of May 2014, not stopping with the presidential elections due in September this year.
It is true that former President Nasheed and his party is hurt that India did not act as it may have anticipated. But the party may have to look inward to as to what might have gone wrong, particularly in terms of assessments of the emerging situation.
After managing well the crisis over the Election Commission in Maldives, the government now will have to initiate legal and political measures to institutionalise facilitating mechanisms for smooth transition. Again, the initiative would lie with President Yameen.
Maldives President Abdulla Yameen is not inexperienced to take half-way measures, only to go back on them. Yet, there is no denying that he would have a lot to explain as to how he has ended up making all wrong choices and decisions in his efforts to consolidate his political power.
Nasheed is the nation's most charismatic leader, maybe for all time. In such a scenario, independent of what the court verdict could be in the 'Judge Abdulla case', any disqualification of Nasheed from contesting the elections could see the politically-polarised nation even more sharply divided.
Despite apprehensions in some quarters, the Hulhumale' Magistrate Court in Maldives let former President Mohammed Nasheed to go home after the day's hearing on Wednesday evening, a day after he was picked up by the police a day earlier and detained overnight.
Addressing the 42nd annual celebrations of the bilateral relations organised by the Friendship Association of India and Maldives (FAIM) in Male on Friday, local media reported outgoing President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik as saying as much:
The latest in the series of crises that have hit the young Maldives democracy is the arrest of Chief Justice of the Criminal Court, Abdullah Mohammed, and the involvement of the Maldivian National Defence Force in executing the arrest request from the police.
Putting at rest avoidable speculation about the Opposition being behind Monday's blast on the presidential speedboat, the Maldivian Government has ruled out the possibility of an assassination attempt, saying a mechanical issue was the probable cause.
For a nation celebrating the golden jubilee of the country's Independence, Maldives has been at sixes and sevens through the previous year. And for a people who have taken politics and democracy with all its dynamism and vibrancy,
The Maldivian authorities can now breathe easy. Now that the Cricket World Cup, played in venues across Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, is completed without any security problems, the reported Interpol alert against Maldives-based religious terrorists targeting the match venues have receded for good.
Former President Mohammed Nasheed was on a six-day-long visit to India, pressing his case for early elections and reiterating his position on the need for reforming the nation's 'independent institutions'.
In Maldives, if the mainline polity has failed in fighting a process now being projected as contributing to religious extremism, militancy or terrorism, the global community too has failed to distinguish between a return of Islamic traditions and the advent of Islamic extremism, and act accordingly.
In Maldives, legal and judicial process may be in for another season of controversies, ahead of the presidential polls in September. It is also in transition, from a not-so-democratic past to a democratised future. It is too early to say which way it would go.
After the cancellation or non-conduct of the court-ordered first-round re-poll on 19 October in Maldives, outgoing President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik and the Supreme Court seem to have expanded the scope and meaning of 'inclusive poll' in the even more contemporary context.
If one thing is becoming increasingly clear in 'democratised' Maldives, it is that street-protests can change Governments and constitutions, policies and national priorities. It is thus that the nation found street-protests heralding 'multi-party' democracy,
That the Maldivian Government of President Mohammed 'Anni' Nasheed has taken the economic reforms process seriously, risking its electoral future, has been known for some time now.
Maldives parliament vote barring registration of political parties with less than 10,000 verifiable members may have set the cat among the pigeons in the Maldivian polity. For, included in the list could be the Quamee Iththihad Party of none other than President Mohammed.
After a week of relative lull on the political front, Maldivian politics revved up on March 5, after the police detained former President Mohammed Nasheed, for production before the Hulhumale' court.
In Maldives, 'bogus voters' and 'fraudulent votes' were among the major issues on which the Supreme Court had adjudicated. However, the prescribed cure has proved to be as problematic as the perceived ailment.
In Maldives, successive elections have shown that the MDP is still not in 'absolute majority' in electoral terms. The DRP cross-over in Parliament after the annulled polls, which alone gave the MDP combine a working majority in the House, may not tell the whole story.
It is anybody's guess why Maldives' Election Commission did not choose to move the Supreme Court, particularly when legal cases of the current nature has the potential to reset the poll-clock, for which there is no provision in the Constitution.
Without most people noticing it and anyone acknowledging it, either inside the country or outside, Maldives' new President Abdulla Yameen launched the nation's new 'foreign policy' at a quiet ceremony in capital Male on January 20, 2014.
The unresolved India-China border dispute brings China closer to the Indian Ocean in every political and geo-strategic calculation of nations like Maldives and Sri Lanka, even though they are not as close to both the 'Asian giants' as the rest of India's South Asian neighbours.
In Maldives, despite a last-minute 'cancellation' of the third round of talks between the Government and the MDP leader of the combined Opposition, there is nothing to suggest that the current reconciliation process has derailed, irrecoverably.
In Maldives, with the People's Majlis, or Parliament, commencing its delayed inaugural session for the current year with the customary address by President Mohammed Wahid Hassan, even if in the midst of disturbances caused by Maldivian Democratic Party.
In a not-so-unexpected development, the Maldivian Supreme Court stripped Elections Commission President Fuwad Thowfeek and Vice-President Ahmed Fayaz Hassan of their membership, for the contempt of the court.
On specifics they may differ, but a common view seems to be slowly emerging on the imminent need for effecting reforms to the nation's judiciary among the divided polity in Maldives.
