Crisis in Maldives

On Tuesday, Mohamed Nasheed resigned as President of Maldives, his place being taken by the Stanford-educated Vice-President, Dr. Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik. The upheaval was the culmination of weeks of turmoil, which began on January 16 when Nasheed ordered the military to arrest Justice Abdulla Mohamed, head of the Maldives Criminal Court.

Sri Lanka shares ties of history and ethnicity with the 1,200-island nation. The Mahawamsa says that ‘Mahiladiva’ or island of women - modern Malé - was settled by the womenfolk of the companions of Vijaya, the legendary founder of the Sinhalese. The people of the Dhivehi Raa’je (‘Island State’) are related to the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka and their language, Dhivehi Bas (‘Island Language’) is a dialect of the ancient Elu tongue which evolved into modern Sinhala.

Before Maldivian tourism became the money spinner that it is (aided in its infancy by Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government), Sri Lanka was its biggest trade partner, buying the Maldive Fish which made up 95 percent of its exports.

Judicial system

Notwithstanding the close ties between the two countries, the government of Sri Lanka has refused, rightly, to intervene - considering developments as internal matters, while hoping that the problems be resolved peacefully.

Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik

Mohamed Nasheed

However, it looks like distant Britain has been taking a rather more than cursory interest in the goings-on in the multi-island republic, once a ‘Protectorate’ of the British Empire (it had a naval and air base in the Southern-most Addu atoll until the 1970s).

Indeed, as Nasheed cracked down on Justice Abdulla Mohamed, elements in Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, including Leader of the Commons George Young, urged reform of the judicial system. John Glen, Tory MP for Salisbury, called the judiciary ‘corrupt’.

It is not hard to trace the reasons for the Conservative government’s concern about Nasheed. Nasheed’s Maldives Democratic Party, like the Tories and Sri Lanka’s United National Party, is a member of the International Democratic Union.

Last November, asked which five leaders he would choose to join him at a stag party organized by former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister David Cameron mentioned Bill Clinton, Obama, Sarkozy, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and ‘my new best friend’, Nasheed.

The last named had certainly built up his connections with the Tories, through a classmate at Dauntsey’s (a 500-year-old Wiltshire public school), David Hardingham, who founded Minivan Radio, a pro-Nasheed media organization. Nasheed was backed abroad by ‘Friends of Maldives’, an NGO formed by Hardingham and stocked with Old Dauntseyans.

Neo-liberal economic policy

At the 2008 Presidential election in which Nasheed came to power, his Campaign Manager was James McGrath, an Australian former aide to Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The NDP was backed with extensive funding from Britain’s right-wing Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Tories Francis Maude, now Minister for the Cabinet Office, Lord Bates, John Glen MP, Karen Lumley MP and Gary Streeter MP advised Nasheed.

After becoming President, Nasheed appointed no fewer than five Britons to advisory and other posts: David Hardingham as Consul in the UK; Mike Mason, an employee of JP Morgan and Mark Lynas, a journalist, as Climate Change Advisors; Simon Hawkins, a writer for Minivan Radio, as Managing

Director of the strategic Maldives Marketing and PR Corporation; and Paul Roberts as Advisor on International Media and Communications.

The MDP government also began following a neo-liberal economic policy, privatising most of the national assets - even Malé airport being given to a foreign company. He also began making inroads into Maldives’ foreign reserves.

Senior ministers began questioning a policy which weakened national sovereignty.

Autocratic style

Nasheed began to be perceived in Maldives - rather like Sri Lankan Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe - as more interested in the opinions of foreigners than in domestic needs. This was reinforced by his support for the illegal Iraq War and his recognition of Israel - opposed by members of his own government.

This led to the steady rise of the Opposition, led by the former ruling Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party, which gained ground in last year’s Local Government elections. The situation was exacerbated by what members of the government saw as Nasheed’s increasingly autocratic style.

Following the arrest of Justice Abdulla Mohamed, which the Supreme Court ruled as illegal and which was also opposed by the Human Rights Commission and the Judicial Services Commission, the legal profession began a boycott. This was followed by public demonstrations against the arrest, leading to the arrest of hundreds of people.

On Monday night, policemen joined the protesters and were fired on with rubber bullets by the military. Early the next morning, the Army went over to the Police. Nasheed, confined to Army headquarters, resigned and Waheed was sworn in as President.

The next day Nasheed was allowed to go free and he promptly led some 2,000 MDP supporters in a demonstration against what he called a ‘coup’. A warrant was issued for his arrest, after police stations came under attack, but Waheed has ordered that he not be taken into custody.

The struggle in the Maldives is between sections of the ruling class. Island politics have been a game of musical chairs among the same feudal families - except for Nasheed’s predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who is considered something of a parvenu by the elite.

They are often more at home in Colombo, Singapore or London than in their own islands, from which they derive their large incomes.

The differences between them are minor; the major parties are socially and economically conservative, differing only on the extent to which they are dependent on foreign powers.

What these struggles may do is release the pent-up furies of the less privileged. The advent of democracy has given these people more of a voice and it is unlikely that the country will go back to a dictatorial system. The infighting in the Maldivian ruling elite may yet give the masses of the Dhivehi Raa’je their day in the sun.