Maldives: It’s over the other 50 per cent voters?
With the presidential elections now set for September 7, political parties in Maldives are vying with one another to identify issues and package them attractively for the voters, many of them youth.
With the presidential elections now set for September 7, political parties in Maldives are vying with one another to identify issues and package them attractively for the voters, many of them youth. Number-crunching does not make things easier for them, given the complexity of the poll and the processes, and the inadequacy of a pattern that they could be relied upon with a certain level of accuracy.
The official notification of the polling date is not expected before July. If no candidate polls more than 50 per cent vote in the first round, there has to be a second, run-off round, between the top two. The Election Commission has fixed the September 21-27 window for the purpose. The official notification, when made, could throw clarity on this score.
Given the youthfulness of the average voters, the electorate is growing. The February figure is put at 240,000, in a population of 394,000 (July 2012) figures. It is 31,000-plus more voters compared to the electorate for the first multi-party presidential polls in October 2008. The current electorate comprises 123,565 male and 116,737 female voters. There was only a marginal increase in the number of voters for the parliamentary polls in May 2009. The Election Commission says the figure could go up as more voters register themselves in March.
It is only half the picture. Through three rounds of national elections, the voter turn-out has been falling, indicating a possible lack of enthusiasm in the electorate. It was a high 85.38 per cent for the presidential polls of 2008, down to 78.87 per cent for the parliamentary elections six months down the line. In 2011, the poll percentage dipped to 70 per cent, indicating that the youthful voter’s fancy for casting his democratic right may be waning. The figure was also closer to the national average in the pre-2008 rounds of presidential polls, when multiple parties and multiplicity of candidates were not in vogue. The polling figure came down further to 70 per cent in the multi-layered local council polls across the nation in 2011.
How they fared
In the first round of presidential polls in 2008, the final victor and infant Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) candidate Mohammed Nasheed polled 25 per cent votes against the 40 per cent for incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. With the committed transfer of votes from Dr Hassan Saeed (16.5 per cent) and Gasim Ibrahim (15.5 per cent) in the second-round, Nasheed polled 55 per cent votes, against Gayoom’s 45 per cent, to become President.
The political scenario had changed drastically in the parliamentary polls of 2009, after the MDP parted company with Hassan Saeed’s Dhivehi Quamee Party (DQP) and Gasim Ibrahim’s Jumhooree Party (JP). It could not maintain the high poll percentage of the past, and was reduced to the second place in the People’s Majlis with Gayoom’s Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP) becoming the single largest party, yet without absolute majority.
After a series of cross-overs and the DRP too splitting with President Gayoom floating the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), the MDP now has 29 members in the 77-seat House, followed by the PPM (18), DRP (14), JP (6), People’s Alliance (2) and DQP (1). There are seven independents, too. The tally could well change after the presidential polls, if not earlier, and could be a factor in the parliamentary polls, which is due next year.
‘Undecided voters’
Despite being an infant democracy, Maldives has a robust enrolment and verification scheme for new members joining political parties, not available in other South Asian nations, including India, the world’s largest democracy. There are complaints about political parties falsifying
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