Maldives, an archipelago of nearly 1200 islands forming into a tourism paradise in the Indian Ocean, has re-asserted its commitment to democracy. Exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed, who returned six months ago to fight the polls, won a resounding two-thirds majority in parliament for his Maldivian Democratic Party in an impressive show of people’s support. This is good news for India and further promotes the cause of democracy in Asia.
The people’s verdict in an orderly poll comes as a vote against the five-year-long autocratic rule of Abdullah Yameen, which saw imposition of Emergency and a distancing of Maldives from its long-time ally, India. Yameen’s party, the Progressive Party of Maldives, got just a handful of seats this time, which meant the people were sick of his style.
Yameen’s ouster from power and winning of the presidential poll by Nasheed’s close associate Ibrahim Mohamed Saleh in September last year was the starting point for the return of the democratic process there. Yameen, on a roll, had imposed Emergency in February and ordered a crackdown on his opponents as also the judiciary. His period in power had seen Pakistan increasingly dabbling in the affairs of Maldives through the help of fundamentalists and seeking to raise anti-India feelings there. Yameen downplayed Maldives’ traditionally strong ties with India and sought to give larger space for China to step in and play geopolitical games. In the process, Yameen also earned a bad name for corrupt practices. Now, investigations into huge holding of funds in his bank vaults would follow.
Notably, Nasheed is now aiming to scrap the executive presidential system adopted by Maldives in 2008 and restore parliamentary democracy wherein people’s elected representatives will have a bigger say. At the same time, with conflicting interests being at work in the political realm and the judiciary having an unpredictable approach to matters, both Nasheed and Saleh will have to tread a careful path. The positives are there too. On the one side, the dissidents exiled by Yameen are back in the island, whose support is vital for the new government. However, the coalition of parties that had helped Saleh win the September presidential polls has failed to hold together.
Yameen is down but not out. The high court has only a week ago lifted a freeze on his controversial bank accounts even as the court said the corruption cases against him would go on. Neither China nor Pakistan, his well-wishers, would be comfortable with the present turn of events. They would be biding their time to work against India via Maldives, again.