Mohammed Nasheed at a gathering in 2013
Courtesy Flickr user Dying Regime
As anticipated, a day after former Maldivian President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed declared that he and predecessor Maummon Abdul Gayoom had come to an agreement on the terms of having incumbent Abdulla Yameen ousted, the latter has promptly denied any such move (at least just now). This could delay the anti-Yameen consolidation of Maldivian political forces, but does not, however, automatically rule out the possibility. In such a case, the implied rider is that Gayoom would drive a hard bargain, at every turn, and also work iron-clad, verifiable guarantees at implementation.
The Hindu quoted Nasheed from his Skype interview to Colombo-based foreign correspondents that he had “come to a clear agreement with … Gayoom” in black and white, but could not spell out the details. Nasheed said the “internal contradictions in Male would play out very soon,” implying a vertical split in Yameen’s ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), of which Gayoom, a half-brother, is the chairman.
“How can you build a future if you always want to go back to the past,” The Hindu quoted Nasheed as saying. “Gayoom, he said, understood that the country had no future for the next generation without democracy.” This apart, Nasheed said, “It would be difficult for a Maldivian politician to act on a regime that enjoys the support of the international community,” and expected the international community to give up on the Yameen leadership.
Without much loss of time, the Gayoom faction of the PPM, or PPM-G for short, promptly dismissed Nasheed’s claims as “lies”. Maldivian web journal, Miadhu, quoted PPM Secretary General Aleem to say that Nasheed did not talk or have had any kind of deals with Maummoon or PPM so far. The PPM also released a statement of the kind, and Aleem said that the party did not want to “respond to everything Nasheed says or respond every time Nasheed says something.” They did not see it as important, he added.
“That is why President Maumoon tweeted today saying that a truth will be the truth even if it is said once, and that a lie will be a lie even if it is repeated 1000 times,” Aleem explained further. Strong words these from Gayoom, who seems to be under pressure to clarify his position on Nasheed’s claims from within his own faction and what still remains the ‘undivided PPM’, at least on paper.
Credibility concerns
Keen observers of Maldives politics alone would acknowledge the credibility concerns among the nation’s various leaders when it comes to alliance-formation. After the experiences of Presidents Nasheed and Yameen, for instance, no future leader would want to trust his Vice President. Translated, it would mean that future presidential candidates are going to find it even more difficult to zero in on a vice presidential running mate, who could still bring in some votes of his own to the kitty and at the same time would not be over-ambitious, to ‘plot to usurp’ the term mid-way.
Gayoom lost credibility on democracy front, and was seen as having made enemies of every aide and friend through his 30 long years in office. In a way, it’s this anxiety of that in office that may have got telescoped in the person of the Vice President in subsequent terms. Sidelining them, or imprisoning them and impeaching them, and other challengers, including prospective ones, may have flowed from what’s emerging as a ‘Maldivian political trait.’
In this, Nasheed comes with an additional burden for an opposition leader in the present circumstances. Again another ‘Maldivian presidential trait’ under the multiparty democracy scheme, it may be argued. Incumbent Yameen is credited with closing future ‘opportunities’ for electoral ally Gasim Ibrahim, the Jumhooree Party founder. Yameen refused to have Gasim as Parliament Speaker first, and later on amended the Constitution to fix a 65 year upper age-limit for contesting the presidency in future elections.
Yameen’s fear viz Gasim, for instance, may have been centred on the constitutional possibility of the Speaker assuming ‘presidency’ in the interim if Parliament were to impeach the President and Vice President simultaneously. Yameen may have also been weighed down by Gasim’s 25 percent vote-share in the first round of the 2013 presidential polls, up from 16 percent in 2008. It was Gasim’s ‘transferrable votes’ from the first round that had made the difference to the second and final round polling in both.
Nasheed faces similar prospects as Yameen on the ‘credibility front,’ or so it seems. After bagging only 25 percent vote share in the first round in 2008 against incumbent Gayoom’s high 40 percent, he could make it to the presidency only with the help of the ‘transferrable votes’ of Gasim (16 percent) and Hassan Saeed (17 percent). If they had not struck any deal about the future, especially the pending parliamentary polls, it was bad enough. If they had, still Nasheed did not honour his part of the deal, or perceptions and prospects of a deal.
In effect, it meant that President Nasheed got Hassan Saeed and Gasim offloaded from his Government, where they had held certain political or ministerial positions, even before the ink on his takeover order had dried. Under him, the MDP came up with an un-spelt new theory that seat-sharing for the parliamentary polls would be linked to alliance partners merging their parties with the MDP.
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