by

N Sathiya Moorthy

With four candidates in the fray, Maldives has voted on expected lines, in the first round of the presidential polls on Saturday, Sep 7. Translated, the Indian Ocean archipelago would go in for a second, run-off round for deciding the next president. It was so even in the first ever multi-party presidential polls in October 2008, in what is often described as ‘democratisation’ of the nation’s politics and elections.

With a high 88.48 percent voter-turnout, compared to an equally high 86-plus percent in the run-off round in 2008, former president Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has polled 45.45 percent vote share this time round. He is followed by Abdulla Yameen (25.35 percent) of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), half-brother of party founder Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president for 30 years until 2008.

Running a close third is Gasim Ibrahim, business tycoon, philanthropist and founder of the Jumbhoree (Republican) Party. Gasim polled 24.07 percent of votes. In the 2008 elections, he had similarly come a close fourth with 15-plus percentage vote share against Dr Hassan Saeed, an independent with 16-plus percent votes. This time round, Hassan Saeed, who was presidential advisor for a time to then president Nasheed and successor Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, became the running mate of Gasim Ibrahim.

President Waheed, who had assumed office under controversial circumstances in February 2012, after being vice-president under then president Nasheed, came a distant fourth this time – with 5.13 percent vote-share. His vice-presidential running-mate, Thasmeen Ali, was the earliest of presidential candidates, nominated as far back as 2010 by the Dhivehi Rayyathunge Party (DRP), also founded by then president Gayoom. Things changed after Gayoom walked out of the party to found the PPM.

Confused coalitions

Confusing as the past five years would seem, it had heralded an era of coalition politics at birth of multi-party democracy. In a way, the present elections are a continuance of the process. Yet, with the MDP having no one to call its ally this time – unlike in 2008 – the party has chosen to plough a lone furrow. Nasheed’s 45.45 percent first-round vote share is both remarkable and inadequate at the same time.

Compared to his 25 percent first-round vote share in 2008 and the 40 percent that incumbent Gayoom got at the time, Nasheed’s popularity rating is upbeat than ever before and incomparable to that of any other leader in the country. In electoral terms, however, the party would have to be imaginative enough to retain the first-round vote share and also cut into the divided opposition’s vote share if he has to win the presidency in the second round.

Post-poll, Nasheed has described his first round score as ‘emphatic’, and declared that in the second round he would register a ‘more emphatic’ victory. If and how he reaches there would show if Maldives would encourage a return to one party rule, against the coalition era since his first time victory – but without losing the multi-party character of the nation’s current polity.

Conversely, a victory for Yameen in the second round at this stage would firm up the character of coalition politics, which Maldives has been at the birth of multi-party democracy. Unlike in 2008, this time round coalition rules would get drawn up and the ‘ethics’ of the game would come into force, so to say. This argument pre-supposes that the non-MDP parties would stick together against the front runner as they had done against incumbent Gayoom in 2008.

In the early hours after the first round results were known, Gasim’s camp followers had contested the polling process and had indicated that they would go to court to determine the runner-up to be able to challenge front runner Nasheed. If this argument were to become vicious, it could mean that even a later day patch-up may not deliver all the ‘transferrable votes’ in Gasim’s pool to Yameen.

Even otherwise, the likes of Gayoom’s politically estranged brother-in-law Ilyas Ibrahim, with a small but definite vote share, need not stick on with Gasim’s decision. The Waheed-Thasmeen Ali candidacy’s five percent vote share from the first round too may be up for the grabs, by either of the two candidates in the second round. All such calculations make the second round interesting and challenging.

Defining moment

The process is both complex and continuing. Yet, it is also the defining moment in the contemporary history of the country. The second round polling for the nation’s presidency later this month is to be followed by the local council elections in December and the parliamentary elections in May next. With the Nasheed presidency faced with an opposition-controlled parliament after his MDP refused to carry forward the coalition of the second round presidential polls five years back, the immediate future too holds similar possibilities, if not a probability, of an opposition-controlled parliament all over again.

Maldivians have not been decisive in the choice of their president in first round polling in two successive elections, distanced by five years. The electorate has shot up by a respectable 15 percent to approximately 240,000 during the period, indicating that the 18-year-old first time voters have a decisive say in the affairs of their government.

At one stage during campaign time, political party leaders were apprehensive about a high turnout and were interpreting the prospective results variously. A high voter turnout by itself showed that they had after all worked hard and imaginatively. Only a detailed analysis, based on official figures, would tell the true tale.

Where Maldives has scored resoundingly, twice successively and successfully, is in bucking the ‘prophets of doom’. The latter, on both occasions, had made the people and the world outside to believe that the nation would be facing turbulent elections with inevitable violence casting its shadow over the infant democracy. It was not to be in 2008, it was not to be in 2013.

The nation could thus heave a sigh of relief in 2008. It has done so already at the end of the first round now. The second round promises to be challenging, yes, for the candidates and their campaign managers – but not necessarily for the Election Commission, the police and also international observers. Some of them may have anticipated the worst. Yet, their presence too might have contributed in a way to the conduct of free, fair and peaceful polls after all!

Whatever be the second round results and whoever the winner, Maldives across the past five years has shown that democracy has come to stay, whatever the course it may have taken and whatever the accusations that may have been made – and whatever anxieties it might have produced for the population nearer home and the world outside, starting with the immediate Indian neighbour.

Hiccups are there, as have been a variety of the same for individual nations as they embrace Western democracy without full knowledge and exposure. If nothing else, unlike most Western democracies, and more like the neighbourhood Third World democracies, Maldives has shown that there can be a multitude of political parties, some strong on ideology, some on personalities, and some others in both.

COURTESY:South Asia Monitor