What Mohammed Nasheed’s breakaway party means for democracy in Maldives

Politics in the Indian Ocean archipelago-nation Maldives ( Pop: 380,000 : circa 2022 ) took an anticipated turn this election year when 12 parliamentarians quit the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of President Ibrahim Solih recently, and moved the Election Commission (EC) to register a new party, calling it ‘The Democrats’ . The name was chosen by 53 per cent of the 220 quick-entries in an open invite for the purpose had ‘democracy’ in it, party leaders said. The question is if democracy as a concept has taken deep roots in the country otherwise it was seen as taking toddler steps even after 15 years and a series of presidential and parliamentary elections since the advent of a multi-party Constitution in 2008. The 12 MPs belong to the ‘Nasheed faction’ of the MDP, identified after the party boss and Parliament Speaker lost the presidential primaries to incumbent Solih to contest the national elections in September. The first democratically-elected president of the nation in 2008, Mohammed Nasheed is yet to quit the MDP. Aides told newsmen to ask him directly when he intended to quit or if he would be the party candidate for the presidential polls. The en masse resignation of the ‘Nasheed MPs’ followed the majority ministerial faction identified with President Solih sacking one of them from the party after he had participated in a cross-party news conference by the political Opposition. In the absence of anti-defection law, this was the only course available to the Solih leadership. At the news conference, the anti-Solih coalition announced their decision to jointly launch a rally, tentatively on 2 June, protesting against the government’s ready acceptance of the ITLOS ruling on demarcating the maritime border with Mauritius in the Chagos Archipelago, down south in the Indian Ocean. Participants at the news conference clarified that their coming together had a limited purpose to ‘protect national interests’, and would not translate as a political alliance (for contesting the presidential election together). However, the Jumhooree Party (JP), whose leader Gasim Ibrahim is contesting the presidential poll almost on his own after the Nasheed group declared its intention to field a candidate, is staying away. Gasim, in a statement, recalled the anti-government protest of 1 May 2015, from which too the JP stayed away  – and which ended up in unprecedented violence. Real test Under the Constitution, the EC has since granted provisional recognition to the Nasheed faction’s new entity and has given them time to produce the signature of 3,000 members, for permanent registration. With the presidential nominations closing on 3 August, it remains to be seen if the EC, in its discretion, decides to shorten the period. However, indications are that The Democrats will have no problem enrolling 10,000 members, required for ‘state funding’ under the Constitution, way ahead of the presidential poll. The real test is if the new party can show fewer than, equal to, or much more than the 15,000 votes that Nasheed had polled in the presidential primaries. There is also the curiosity to know if they will be able to sign up 50,000 members , which Nasheed said was his target for the reformist Fikuregge Dhirun movement to ‘Revive Ideology’ within the MDP soon after losing the primaries. As per EC figures , the pre-split MDP remained the largest party with 57,000 members, followed by jailed former President Abulla Yameen’s PPM with 37,000 registered members. This was after the EC had struck down 45,000 names of the MDP’s registry, against stout protests only from the Nasheed faction. According to the EC, 6,000 in the MDP registry were verified members of the PPM while the other 39,000 had not registered with any political party. Now, Nasheed is under pressure, yet, the new party has given him an opportunity to prove that he had those numbers. The question is if there will be any simultaneous reduction in the MDP membership and if it will impact Solih’s chances in the presidential poll. President Solih’s official spokesperson Miuvaan Mohamed claimed that the exit of 12 MPs was ‘not a challenge’ .  He may have a point as even with Nasheed’s name added to the list of ‘defectors’, the Solih government still has the support of close to 60 MPs in the 87-member Parliament. Justifying the decision to sack party MPs, MDP parliamentary group leader Mohamed Aslam said that members’ behaviour was ‘no longer tolerable’ after they had signed to impeach Attorney-General Ibrahim Riffath and Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid , over the ‘Chagos issue’. A relatively new entrant to electoral politics, Maldives National Party (MNP) of former defence minister Col Nazim (retd) has also launched a signature campaign to impeach President Solih . As a further follow-up, the ministerialists have moved a no-confidence motion with 50 signatures against deputy speaker Eva Abdualla , a cousin of Speaker Nasheed who is among the 12 MPs who quit the party and have been declared as ‘Independents’ until The Democrats are recognised as a registered party. Without offering any explanation, Nasheed has told detractors that he ‘cannot be kicked out’ . In the meantime, Yameen’s PPM-PNC combine has invited other parties to ‘team up in Parliament ’. A lot will depend on how the Yameen combine, the JP and MNP, among others, vote on the no-confidence motion against foreign minister Shahid, attorney-general Ibrahim and deputy speaker Eva. The MDP has already issued a three-line whip for party MPs to vote out Eva and defend the two ministers in Parliament. However, the current run-up saw less than 50 of the 87 MPs (including the Speaker) participating in politically-sensitive votes against the government, moved by the Nasheed faction. Two of them were lost with only seven MPs supporting them. Just now, thus, the combined Opposition does not have the numbers to throw out the two ministers or stall the deputy speaker’s ouster. As things stand, they do not have the numbers to impeach the President, which requires a two-thirds majority, or the support of 56 MPs. The Opposition’s collective strategy seems to want to ‘expose’ MDP parliamentarians who are publicly or privately opposed to the government on the Chagos issue but who may vote against their motions. Rather, try and corner Solih on the Chagos issue and then go their way in the presidential poll. Opposition – united or divided? The Nasheed faction’s decision to float a new party and also field a presidential candidate has muddled the pool more than already. In recent weeks, they had repeatedly reiterated their support for Jumhooree Party (JP) boss, Gasim Ibrahim , in the presidential poll. The JP claims to continue in the MDP-led ruling coalition, formed ahead of the presidential poll of 2018, which Solih wrested from incumbent Yameen – even after deciding to field a presidential candidate against the incumbent. After talks with the Nasheed faction slowed down, Gasim declared that he would still contest the elections. The question is if Nasheed had strategised only for weakening weaken the Solih camp by Gasim’s decision to contest and then field his own candidate or contest it himself. However, by staying away from the Chagos issue protest scheduled for 2 June, Friday, the JP has also thrown a spanner in the Opposition’s work. Even without this confusion, the Opposition is a divided house, what with the PPM-PNC combine hoping for the High Court to quash his electoral disqualification after a lower court had ordered his imprisonment for 11 years in a ‘money-laundering’ case. The Supreme Court had earlier freed him in a similar case while the trial court seized a third such case. With nominations for the presidential polls closing on 3 August, there is palpable uncertainty in the Yameen camp about his disqualification being removed, for him to be able to contest the election. The official party claim is that he would be able to do so . There are no reports about the PPM-PNC combine considering alternatives, including the wisdom of fielding an alternate candidate in good time, for him to launch an effective campaign for first-round polling on 9 September. The presidential poll is thus poised to be a multi-cornered contest, with incumbent Solih taking on rivals from the PPM-PNC combine, The Democrats of Nasheed, JP’s Gasim Ibrahim and MNP founder Col Nazim, all having declared their intention to contest. There could be others like Yameen era Home Minister Umar Naseer, who announced his decision to contest the presidential poll and is more active in the anti-government protest on the ‘Chagos issue’, apart from some independents. In such a crowded scenario, there are chances of the presidential election going into the second, run-off round, already slated for 30 September, if needed. In such a scenario, only two top scorers in the first round get to contest the second, and alliances formed with the other runners-up have been an important factor in deciding victory in the presidential polls of 2008 and 2013. In the last election of 2018, Solih became the first one in the nation’s democratic history to be elected in the first round, with 58 per cent votes against incumbent Yameen’s 42 per cent. Ginger group On the face of it, the uncertainties that hogged the Solih government despite the  ‘super-majority’ it enjoyed in Parliament, unlike its two predecessors since 2008, did raise questions about the suitability of multi-party democracy to a nation that was steeped in the thousand-plus year tradition of by Islamic sultanates, preceded by Buddhist and Hindu rulers. That owed to the Nasheed faction which began operating as a ‘ginger group’ within the MDP, as was won’t happen whenever the political Opposition was weak in a democracy. It is no more the case. For long, the world has lived under the impression that president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who ruled as a quasi-elected leader for 30 long years (1978-2008) when alone Nasheed became the first elected President under a multi-party democratic dispensation, was dubbed as an ‘autocrat’. The felicity with which Gayoom adapted himself to the changing mores, and his acceptance of changes when mooted by a new generation of leaders in the first decade of this century, though with certain reservations than outright reluctance, should cause the earlier assumptions to be questioned. Later came the Yameen era (2013-18), where he was painted as being as autocratic as his half-brother Gayhoom in the past. Like Gayoom, he too did not shy away from elections and readily conceded defeat and arranged for a smooth transfer of power, when the all-party Opposition candidate Solih trounced him in 2018. Today, when the MDP, which was the first registered party in the country under the 2008 Constitution, is split, the breakaway Nasheed faction has adopted a more democratic path than at any time in the past. Nasheed is also on record that he wants a more-representative parliamentary democracy to replace the existing presidential form of government, which is more centralised. Then there is a high 42 per cent of the voters, who according to Election Commission records, are not registered with any party – but will still be calling the shots, including by substantial boycott of polling, if they so decided after substantive consideration, within. All of it thus makes for a vibrant democracy, after all, though on the face of it, Maldives may look chaotic and worse, for those seeing it from the outside, and only occasionally. The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views expressed are personal. 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