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Loss of Hope in Maldives

Vishal Arora - 9/22/2010

While the establishment of a multi-party democracy in the Indian Ocean archipelago in 2008 ended a 30-year period of authoritarian rule under President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, it started a vicious political struggle depriving the Maldivians of any sense of relief.

Six months after former activist Mohamed Nasheed won the October 2008 presidential election, Gayoom’s Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) and its allies got a simple majority in the parliamentary election. When two rival parties became almost equally powerful, the clash was inevitable.

The tussle between the ruling coalition led by President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and the conservative DRP and its ally People’s Alliance (PA) peaked in June 2010 when the education minister Dr. Mustahafa Luthfee’s planned to make Islam and national language Dhivehi optional in school curricula for senior students.

The Gayoom regime homogenized Sunni Islam by restricting people’s religious and cultural rights – the South Asian island nation claims to have a 100 percent Muslim population like in Saudi Arabia. Nasheed, on the other hand, is seen as a liberal Muslim.

The other bone of contention was the government’s move to privatize the Malé International Airport, which was a source of income for some opposition legislators.

In response, the opposition moved a bill in the parliament to amend the Public Finance Act to resist further privatization of state property, and brought in a no-confidence motion against the education minister. However, on June 29, President Nasheed’s cabinet resigned en masse alleging inability to carry out its constitutional duties. The government also arrested some opposition legislators – including the leader of the PA and Gayoom’s half-brother, Abdulla Yameen – on charges of bribing lawmakers to vote against the government in the parliament. The arrests led to violent street protests in which several people were injured.

The cabinet was reappointed, but after the country remained without a government for a week. Peace talks between the MDP and the opposition parties began on July 26.

However, on August 7, the executive-legislature clash resulted in the expiry of the two-year term of the interim Supreme Court without the establishment of the permanent court by an act of parliament. President Nasheed issued a decree to appoint four legal practitioners to continue the administrative functions of the apex court. However, four days later, the apex court was formed and new members of the national human rights commission were appointed.

What was behind the surprising consensus remains a mystery, but what is visible is that the accord was limited to the issues concerning the Supreme Court and the human rights commission. The struggle for power and counter allegations carry on.

On August 26, Maldives’ Civil Court ruled that Yameen’s arrest was unconstitutional. The country is yet to enact a criminal procedure code.

“Nasheed wants to establish ‘street law’,” Yameen said. “My arrest amounted to kidnapping. Although not its jurisdiction, Nasheed sent the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF or the Maldivian army] to arrest and send me to an incarcerated island for 10 days and 11 nights,” he complained. The army, instead of the police, was sent after the court had refused to give arrest warrants against the legislators.

The MDP denies the allegations. Mariya Didi, the party president, said that the opposition was facing charges of “corruption and buying votes and legislators, “which in other countries would have resulted in resignations” of the legislators. She also complained that the court refused warrants against erring legislators despite “what the public sees as a prima facie case”. “With a long history of such angry protests resulting in personal injury and death to previous rulers and their associates, the President had no alternative but to keep Yameen in Aarah Island till the situation in the capital improved,” she said.

Will the peace talks end the tensions? It seems difficult. On September 2, the MDP boycotted the talks in the presence of UN officials stating that such an exercise was futile.