MDP Makes Strategic Retreat in Maldives Political Face-Off

June 28, 2015 (Delayed Post)

MALE/ NEW DELHI:

Former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has chosen to make a strategic retreat after the failure of the June 12 protest. In a move that has surprised many and created quite a social media storm among its supporters, the MDP issued a whip to its MPs to vote in favour of a crucial constitutional amendment seeking to alter the age of Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate to between 30 and 65 years. With the Opposition JP already having capitulated following intense pressure on the financial assets of its leader Gasim Ibrahim, the MDP – with its jailed leader (President Nasheed) – was the lone stumbling block in a move seen as crucial for President Yameen’s control over the corridors of power in Male. With the MDP strategic backdown, the bill was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Majlis (Parliament). 78 MPs including those from the PPM-MDA government, as well as the Opposition MDP and JP voted for the motion, while only 2 MPs voted against. It marked a key turning point in the battle for democracy in the Maldives.

FIRST SIGNS OF DISARRAY

Weeks ahead of the June 12 protest in Male, activists of the MDP were still basking in the afterglow of the hugely successful May Day protest that saw the Opposition alliance of the Adhaalath Party, Jumhooree Party and the MDP bring out over 20,000 people onto Majheedee Magu, the main street of Male. Close to 7,000 of these protesters were people from the atolls, who had flocked to Male in the face of substantial intimidation by the police and authorities.

Barely 2,500 people joined in the anti-government protest called by the MDP and Opposition parties including the Jumhooree Party and Adhaalath Party in Male. It was enough, though, to fill this small intersection of two of Male’s main roads.

Despite the arrest of top leaders of the MDP and AP and the arrest and prosecution of 193 protesters – many of whom subsequently lost their jobs –  the MDP was on a political high. But in politics, you’re often only as good as your last protest. And when the MDP announced it was taking the lead in organising the June 12 protest, it perhaps never imagined that less than 2,000 people would answer their call. In fact, one senior MDP official boasted of an even bigger turnout, saying: “This time there will be 35,000 people!”

Wishful thinking, because even before the protest began on June 12, MDP activists had already conceded that it would be nowhere close to a repeat of the May Day turnout. Sources in the MDP leadership and a source in the office of President Nasheed were still hopeful of a turnout of at least 5,000 people.

No one expected a turnout of less than 2,000 people.

Later, MDP activists conceded that they were aware of the woefully low turnout by the 9th of June and many were in favour of calling off the protest. However, a decision was taken to forge ahead, lest those who were planning on turning up, were further disappointed by a cancellation of the event.

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

The failure of the May Day protest to reach the tipping point and effect regime change in Male was a body blow to plans of the Opposition MDP-AP-JP alliance. The Opposition’s hope that the Maldivian armed forces – the MNDF – would find itself forced to step in and take charge if the protest was somehow able to build up public sentiment and anger, manifesting itself in violent clashes with the Maldivian Police, was clearly and woefully misplaced. The international community – the other prong in the pincer that the Opposition was counting on, had delivered. But the plan of the MDP to shoot from the MDNF’s shoulder was a grave miscalculation.

The government came down with an uncharacteristic heavy hand, and the police action, the arrests and subsequent legal action – together with the Opposition leaders’ complete lack of a plan to capitalise on public anger and sentiment – all led to the indignant flames of protest being snuffed out quite effectively.

In hindsight, the failure of the June 12 protest was scripted long before. The MDP – licking its wounds – tried desperately to justify the failure by putting it down to the upcoming month of Ramadan, lack of propaganda and adequate build-up – yes, even blaming the weather for the poor turnout. But there was no shying away from reality.

As one MDP activist wearily confided: “It’s back to the drawing board now.”

‘NOTHING WITHOUT NASHEED’

The incarceration of President Nasheed has created a complexity of internal problems for the MDP, with constant jostling and manoeuvring for centrestage within the party. Currently, it’s the activist core, which has surrounded Nasheed for years, that appears to be calling the shots in the party, relegating even senior leaders like Ibu Soleih to the sidelines. Many of the MDP leaders in the limelight today, including party chairperson Ali Waheed, are politicians who joined the MDP after Nasheed’s victory in the 2008 Presidential election, and are hence seen as ‘outsiders now holding sway’, by many within the party as well as those have distanced themselves yet continue to be politically aligned with the party’s founding principles.

Without going deeper into the MDP’s internal strife as well as its current brand of cult personality politics, the rejection of President Nasheed’s clemency appeal by President Yameen and the subsequent release of Nasheed from prison into house arrest on health grounds, clearly points to an understanding having been struck by the current core leadership of the MDP and the Yameen government. Doctors had advised President Nasheed to undergo an MRI scan, but the Yameen government was steadfast in its refusal to permit him to undergo this scan. Even during the June 12 protest, much of the concern around the fate of Nasheed within the MDP was about his health and how he needed to urgently undergo an MRI scan.

It is still unclear what led to the change of heart by President Yameen in permitting Nasheed’s temporary three-day transfer to house arrest, but a lot can be gauged from the open acknowledgement of the MDP and its core group of activists that they are “nothing without Nasheed”, and their subsequent decision to vote with the government on the constitution amendment bill.

Today, with Nasheed back home for at least eight weeks medically advised rest, and tensions having visibly eased between the MDP and the government, the focus will now be on talks between both sides and whether any breakthrough can be made on important institutional changes required in Maldives’ fledgling democracy. The MDP has agreed to participate in the talks says President Nasheed, and President Yameen has appealed to the United Nations to aid in this process.

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UPA’s Stick Approach Forces A ‘Civil’ Rethink

My right thumb!

“Unfortunate but unavoidable”, was how Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put it yesterday, when pushed to react to public outrage over the midnight raid by Delhi Police on the Ramlila Maidan, where Baba Ramdev was staging his satyagraha. Three words, which when coupled with Kapil Sibal’s ‘hurt and outrage’ expressed yesterday, seem to have settled the balance of power firmly in favour of the government. A government that is now in no mood to benevolently allow the politics of fasts to continue. The immediate fallout: The government frowning upon Anna Hazare’s proposed protest fast in support of Baba Ramdev at Jantar Mantar.

Simultaneously in Haridwar, Ramdev was in a conveniently forgiving mood. His brand of fast-politics has been repelled in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh by the UPA and Mayawati respectively. Faced with the ominous threat of multiple investigations into his organisation and its functioning by various Ministries of the government, Ramdev now says he has “followed his sanyasi dharma and forgiven the Prime Minister”.

The stick approach clearly seems to have worked for the UPA government, with Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hedge now saying that the Civil Society Representatives will participate in negotiations with the government on the drafting of the Lokpal Bill on June 15, 16.

It’s the right approach by Anna Hazare and his followers. The representatives of civil society have won a hard-fought victory by forcing the government to the negotiations table over the Lokpal Bill. Their place, now, is across the negotiations table and not on the streets on New Delhi. Their responsibility is to accurately reflect the opinions and demands of the civil society that they represent, in the negotiations over the Bill. The only way they can be true to their cause, is by participating in the negotiations, not boycotting it. The stakes for civil society are too big to be frittered away in petty politicking and childish boycotts.

And involved engagement of the UPA Government with the aim of protecting civil society’s interests are paramount and must remain so.

But these are also testing times for the UPA Government. Giddy with the success of its stick-approach having worked, the government now needs to ensure that it doesn’t gloat in victory. The UPA must remember that it is a popularly elected government of the people, for the people and by the people.  Acts like imposing Section 144 in New Delhi and refusing permission to Anna Hazare, to fast in protest at Jantar Mantar, are signals of the government tottering dangerously on impinging civil liberties.

Governance is as much about acting in national interest as about protecting the people’s interests, and the UPA will need to prove through the Lokpal Bill and its decisions on the black money issue, that it is truly a progressive alliance, equally adept at both.