At a time when the national discourse should have been on fast-tracking the post-Covid economic recovery and consequent social equity, the Maldives is increasingly getting caught in a web of its own making. While shadow boxing within the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) is draining governmental energies and time, the opposition PPM-PNC combine of former president Abdulla Yameen is deflecting from exposing the fissures in the ruling party to target India, which has a lot of goodwill among individual Maldivians. 

The one-upmanship within the MDP flows from the top two wanting to contest the presidential election late next year as the candidate of the ruling combine. Apart from the MDP, the alliance comprises three other parties: the Jumhooree Party (JP) of businessman-politician Gasim Ibrahim, the religion-centric Adhaalath Party (AP) and the Maumoon Reform Movement of Abdul Gayoom, the once discredited president of 30 years (1978-2008). The allies are upset and at times angry but they are not in a position to upset the apple cart, together or separately, certainly not this far ahead of the presidential polls, especially without knowing the alternatives available. 

The MDP infighting took the form of Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, the first democratically elected President, publicly declaring his intent to shift to a parliamentary system with himself as the interim Prime Minister through constitutional amendments. There is also a need for a public referendum, to which however Nasheed has not alluded. The Nasheed camp has been maintaining silence on this score, shifting gears as always, after the rival group, identified with incumbent President Ibrahim ‘Ibu’ Solih, won majority seats in the national council, MDP’s apex policy-making body.

Maldivian squabbles 

The Solih camp, which has demonstrated its majority in the MDP parliamentary group more frequently, also won the House leader’s position recently. The party has a high 65 of the total 87 MPs with the allies adding a few more. The two camps are now fighting the party’s chairmanship, which runs the day-to-day administration, even as Nasheed will continue as party chief in charge of politics, policies and programmes. A victory for the Nasheed camp would consolidate his position even more while a defeat would put party affairs possibly at loggerheads. Efforts for a patch-up between the two leaders have been few and far between. 

In a toddler of a democracy that requires a stable polity, Nasheed has gone further and farther, by directly targeting his party’s government and ministers, the former for inefficiency and the latter for corruption. More recently, he tweeted that the Solih government lacks support and it will be difficult for the party to win the presidential election. There could not be a more demoralising declaration from the President of any similarly-placed party in any democracy. Any person in Nasheed’s position would have initiated disciplinary action against other party leaders for similar statements, whatever the truth and justification.   

The MDP infighting is yet to peak. It could be reached if either camp insisted on party primaries for choosing the presidential nominee for the ruling coalition as a whole. The Nasheed camp has been insistent thus far. The Solih camp, citing the amendment made to the party constitution when Nasheed was President, argues that as the incumbent, the former would be automatically nominated without primaries if he expressed a desire to contest.  

Judiciary shadow 

Team Nasheed, while acknowledging the amendment, has argued that the amendment had only one-time application. It is unclear if the issue could become contentious and if so whether the party’s national council could decide on it. The alternative could be for either camp to approach the Election Commission or the higher judiciary, making party affairs messier. 

The MDP feud and Solih’s media-shy nature have cost him brownie points on administrative positives, starting with comparatively effective Covid management, the bold decision to open up tourism economy a full year before the rest of the world, avoidance of shortages and continuance of physical and social infrastructure projects, all across the nation of islands and atolls, many of them with Indian assistance, through the lockdown period and beyond. Topping the list is the three-island sea-bridge project, the single largest one in the country, overshadowing the China-funded Sinimale Bridge similarly connecting capital Male and airport-island Hulhule under the Yameen presidency. Nasheed is louder than Solih in applauding the Indian assistance, starting with the voluntary medical and economic help during the Covid times – and more so in branding Chinese funding under the Yameen presidency (2013-18) as a  debt-trap, but it stops there. 

Yameen launched an India Out campaign last year, and has to be viewed in this background. There are little chances of the India Out campaign per se making a major impact on the presidential polls, and in favour of Yameen or his alternate candidate, if he were to be disqualified again if and when courts convict and sentence him in the two pending ‘money-laundering’ cases. Prima facie, the ‘India Out’ campaign by itself does not have the strength and steam to win elections in a nation that recognises the unqualified Indian support through the past decade, in the supply of daily essentials like rice, sugar and medicines, apart from a host of other consumables and consumer durables.

India Out  

Yameen’s immediate problem is that he is facing two corruption cases for which the trial court verdicts are expected by June. It could be followed by the two-stage appeal, including the Supreme Court, whose final order could be expected well before the presidential polls late next year. He has dubbed the court cases as politically-motivated and vindictive, aimed at obtaining his disqualification from contesting the election alongside a prison term. 

The Yameen camp is campaigning on the fact that Supreme Court has already acquitted him in a money-laundering case, for improper investigations and inadequate presentation. He had spent a part of the five-year jail-term by the time the verdict came, delayed by the Covid lockdown and dislocation. The Supreme Court acquittal restored his right to contest the presidential polls, which may be in jeopardy if he is convicted in either or both the pending criminal cases. 

This apart, Yameen is also attempting to deflect such imagery by projecting himself as a nationalist in a country that takes pride as the only non-colonised South Asian nation. As may be recalled, Maldivians threw out the Portuguese occupiers in the 16th century and the British in 1965. This one in particular related to the decision of the Maldivian government under Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, later President, to widen the Male airport runway, to facilitate big-ticket tourism, which is now the backbone of the nation’s economy.   

Attack on GMR 

Whether it was imploring dependent-predecessor President Waheed to get rid of the Indian infra major GMR Group out of the Male airport expansion project, signed by the Nasheed government, or now over the so-called Indian military presence, Yameen is playing on nationalist sentiments which worked in his favour in elections in 2013 but may not do so a decade later. So complete was his disenchantment and hatred for India that as President, Yameen hastily paid an unaffordable $271 million in compensation and damages to GMR, as ordered by the Singapore arbitration court. 

Yameen’s year-old India Out campaign is also centred on his firm belief that independent of the change of governments and leadership in New Delhi, India was against his becoming the president, now or earlier. Ahead of the 2013 presidential polls, he was convinced that India’s efforts at creating a level-playing field was only to ensure that the pending ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’ did not go on trial, and prime accused and former President Nasheed stood a chance to contest. 

Yameen, along with another candidate, Jumhooree Party’s Gasim Ibrahim, also issued a joint statement that Indian IT professionals assisting the Maldivian Elections Commission were out to fudge the results in Nasheed’s favour. However, he won the controversial polls by a thin margin after the Supreme Court had given favourable verdicts, ordering repolls and shifting the poll-date too beyond the statutory mandated end of the five-year term of the Nasheed-Waheed presidency. 

India is upset 

There is no doubt that New Delhi was peeved at the Yameen leadership for seeking big-ticket aid from China, which had the inherent potential to upset the strategic balance in the Indian Ocean waters. Yet, there was no reason or way India could have expressed its reservations in the matter other than through diplomatese as feared by Yameen. New Delhi never thought of cutting supplies of daily essentials, even by the private sector, to the Maldives, through formal sanctions or otherwise, which would have been the Western way of doing things under similar circumstances. 

Yet, when it came to the Maldivian Supreme Court unilaterally and without proper hearings ordering freedom for Nasheed, who had obtained political asylum in the UK, as in the pre-democracy past and was travelling all across, and a shocked Yameen declared emergency and sacked two of the five judges who passed the website order (which was not pronounced in the open court), New Delhi, in an unprecedented manner, came up with three statements, one after the other, in February 2018, criticizing the emergency declaration and the like. Nasheed, who had earlier been sentenced to 13 years in prison in abduction case revived by the Yameen dispensation, had moved to the UK for medical treatment on prison leave, after India and Sri Lanka especially confronted Yameen in Male separately. On a later date, India also declared a senior Yameen aide persona non grata on arrival at the Chennai airport to attend on his ailing mother in a hospital, and turned him back – obviously for his Yameen connection unrelated to whatever other things the aide might have done in violation of the local laws. 

Through all these, Yameen began pressing New Delhi to take back the two helicopters, gifted by India for humanitarian work in the archipelago-nation, for evacuation of emergency patients from faraway islands and such other work. In his time, Yameen had also obtained a Dornier fixed-wing aircraft as gift from India, so his sudden urge for having the Indian flying machines out of the Maldives did not make sense, other than in political terms. His perceived apprehension that the Indian military personnel flying and manning the machines were a possible threat to national security did not make sense. India dilly-dallied on his direction to take back the choppers until Yameen’s defeat in elections in 2018. The successor Solih government cancelled his directive. 

Ghosh concerns 

Today, Yameen has added the India-funded harbour project for the Maldivian Coast Guard on Uthuru Thila Falhu (UTF) island to his list of ‘ghost concerns’ against New Delhi. He remains unconvinced even after some of his alliance MPs were allowed to read the agreement copy on their computer screens. At the same time, he has looked the other way when the Solih government has gone ahead with signing two defence cooperation agreements with the US, the first one in September 2020 and the other in April 2022. 

The agreements provide for across-the-board non-combat training in areas as diverse as environmental protection and cyber security. The US agreement also mentions the Indo-Pacific as a region of common security concern. The term is an anathema to China, perceived as a favourite of Yameen, as Beijing seeks to contest the US supremacy in the post-Cold War unipolar world, and focussed mainly on the Indian Ocean, with the world’s busiest sea lines of communication (SLOCS). 

Two birds, one stone 

Where does it all leave contemporary Maldivian politics? Going by the presidential poll results in 2018, the MDP stands a fair chance of repeating the performance in 2023, though not necessarily to the same levels. In 2018, Solih as the common opposition candidate polled 58 per cent vote share against the mandatory minimum of 50 per cent. However, contesting against what was acknowledged as a formidable combine with a lot of international diplomatic and media backing (neither of which influenced Maldivian voters), incumbent Yameen polled a respectable 42 per cent vote share. 

There is nothing to prove his rivals claims that his campaign had corrupted the voters through cash and such other incentives on election-eve. Instead, in the eyes of the average Maldivian voter – whether he approved of Yameen’s ways or not – he was and is seen as a development man. He fashioned himself after Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew but ended up more like a mirror-image of China’s Xi Jinping. 

In the Parliament elections that followed in April 2020, the MDP won a massive majority of 65 seats in a House of 87. Contesting alone at Nasheed’s instance and out-of-turn declarations to the effect, the party polled only 46 per cent vote share, falling short of the absolute numbers required to win the presidency again. Alive to the possibilities, Solih has been firmly carrying the MDP allies with him, unmindful of avoidable hiccups. However, the biggest hiccup up continues to come in the form of Nasheed, the party chief, who is not as non-equivocal in the matter. 

MDP infighting 

The continual infighting in the MDP has also stymied the allies from taking the government’s success stories to the people, for fears of mutual suspicion. They are still uncomfortable with the idea of returning to the Yameen camp, or backing new entrants like the Maldivian National Party (MNP) of ex-Yameen aide, Col Mohamed Nazim (Retd). They can be expected to weigh their own options closer to election-time, though their own vote-shares too might have shrunk. 

Yameen is yet to overcome his image as a corrupt politician, which is what the incumbent government is driving at. It is also one reason why Yameen is unable to or unwilling to pursue rival Nasheed’s lead on charging the Solih government as ‘corrupt and inefficient’. It may also owe to the Yameen camp’s conviction that they did not have to repeat or hijack Nasheed’s personal agenda that suits them well. By targeting India through his confused and equally confusing campaign, at times tagged India Out and on other occasions as India Military Out, Yameen is only acknowledging New Delhi’s continued contributions for Maldivian welfare and well-being. 

Yameen seems to want to kill two birds with one stone. One, his camp wants to teach India a lesson though no one has come up with an alternative to the last-mile Indian help and assistance which a distantly placed China or any other nation cannot rush all the time, as witnessed post-tsunami, post-Covid and the Male drinking water-crisis in December 2015, when Yameen was president.   

Two, by targeting India, Yameen hopes to get at the Solih government as ‘less nationalist’ just as the opposition could convince the people that the previous Nasheed administration was less Islamic, to be able to win the controversial presidential elections in 2013. Indications are that Yameen would have to do much more than his single-issue India Out campaign to win the presidency again, but he is not talking about development and jobs, two key areas of voter interest, which are also his traditional electoral agenda.

Non-committed voters 

Against this, the Solih government has been able to bring in localised physical and social infra projects to almost every inhabited island, especially through Indian funding. Yet, there is no escaping from the continuing barrages from Nasheed, who is still rated as the nation’s single-most popular leader (despite Yameen’s proven 42 percent vote share). The infighting in the MDP especially seems to have put off the 20-30 percent ‘non-committal voters’, who had helped the MDP win past elections. There is, however nothing, to suggest that Yameen may have lost too much of his past voter-backing though there is enough time for the ruling combine to launch a focussed campaign in the matter. 

Yameen’s immediate concern however should be the pending court cases with the potential to disqualify him from contesting the presidential polls. There are half a dozen aspirants within the PPM-PNC combine to contest on his behalf – but only if he is disqualified. Included in the list are his estranged former Vice-President, Dr Mohamed Jameel Ahmed, who is leading Yameen’s defence in the courts, Maldives Mayor, Dr Mohamed Muizzu, a former minister – and also Ghassan Maumoon, MP, son of Yameen’s estranged half-brother and former President, Gayoom, carrying the family-tag and whose substantive vote-share has since transferred to Yameen. 

The question in such a situation is this: Could Yameen keep his folk united and could also transfer all of his vote shares to the candidate of his choice and also obtain another eight-plus percent to win the presidency when he would also be imperilled from campaigning in person?  

Such a campaign, however, runs the risk of the rival ruling combine telling the voters how if a Yameen candidate is elected, an out-of-turn presidential poll could become imminent as the new president’s only job would be to ensure freedom for Yameen and restoration of his right to contest elections – and then quit himself.  

Yet, a lot will depend on how and how far does the non-committed voters act or react to a Yameen return or if they would stay away on the appointed day even in elections 2023, disenchanted as they are with the course of events, especially in the MDP, bringing down the poll percentage from the past average of 90-plus percent.

(The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and commentator. Views are personal. He can be reached at  sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)