The visit by Maldives foreign minister Abdulla Shahid to India, mere weeks before the Maldivian presidential election scheduled for 9 September, can be seen either as a sign of total confidence or significant insecurity – depending on whose point of view you agree with.
Certainly, Shahid is being given the full Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) treatment – a lecture at the MEA think-tank Sapru House (‘The Power of Small – the Maldives Story’), several project development assistance agreements under outright Indian grants (not loans), signed under the watchful gaze of External Affairs minister S Jaishankar and the Maldivian foreign minister, as well as New Delhi’s iteration that the “Maldives is India’s key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean (IOR) and occupies a special place in Prime Minister’s vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the ‘Neighbourhood First policy’.”
But what is fascinating about the forthcoming elections in this tiny South Asian nation (population approximately 5,00,000) is that the characters in the fray are acquiring Shakespearean overtones.
Why Maldives is ‘boiling hot’
There is President Ibu Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), whose safe hands and ability to run a diverse coalition over the last five years have won him approval both at home and abroad (read, India). There is Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s charismatic former president, who broke away from the MDP to form his own party called the ‘Democrats’ and who may be aligning with his former political enemy, Abdulla Yameen, to defeat his former party.
And then there is the powerful Yameen of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), who, when president, ordered that Nasheed be dragged through the streets and jailed over trumped-up charges. Yameen is also said to be pro-China and the mastermind of the “India Out” campaign that has severely damaged the possibility of cordial ties between the PPM and India in recent months.
Neither Nasheed nor Yameen are likely fighting the election. Yameen can’t because he is in jail, and Nasheed won’t because he would rather not fight Solih, his former political brother and confidante. He would much rather that someone else be the face of the Opposition. Even more interesting is the rumour flying on the wings of the Indian Ocean breeze in Male, that Nasheed and Yameen, former political enemies, will join hands and field a common candidate against Solih.
You would think that the September election in the Maldives – a run-off will be held on 30 September if no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round – with approximately 2,50,000 voters in a country comprising some 1,400 islands and atolls, a population smaller than my residential community in a corner of South Delhi, would be the equivalent of a kitty party with ladies lunching in kid gloves and lace parasols (or their South Delhi equivalent).
But fear not. The sharp knives have been out on all sides for a while and back-stabbing is par for the course – all metaphorical, of course. All the sides in the triangle described above are daily weighing the possibility of how far to align with another in the first round so that it eliminates the run-off. And if the run-off is inevitable, then how to manage, manoeuvre and cunningly administer the second so that they land on top of the heap.
To repurpose Lewis Caroll, these days in the Maldives, the “sea is boiling hot”, and each of the main characters in the fray is wondering if, by the end of September, they will either be consigned to a dustbin full of colourless, tasteless cabbages or, lo and behold, actually be anointed king.
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Does MDP have India’s support?
It is in this magnificently mixed-up situation that Shahid has come to town. As President Solih’s foreign minister, he would be fully correct in assuming that his MDP has India’s support. After all, when the MDP won a surprise election five years ago by incredibly overthrowing the previous pro-China Yameen government, the big fat rumour that refused to recede with the tide was that “India had somehow helped the MDP.”
Of course, no country can “somehow help” if its people haven’t decided that they will vote someone in or out. Clearly, Maldivians were fed up with Yameen – he was both corrupt and cruel, with a particular fascination for putting political prisoners in solitary cells on faraway islands with just the wind and setting sun for company, night after night, month after endless month. And he was in hock to China.
Where was the question in 2018? PPM out, MDP in! That was the unwritten slogan when Maldivians went to the ballot boxes. Nasheed was in exile in Sri Lanka at the time, so Solih became the MDP’s presidential candidate – remember, they were blood brothers at the time.
But power has a way of insinuating itself into the tightest of spaces and laying the seed of desire, jealousy and envy. The Indian Ocean breeze fans these feelings nicely. Nasheed, the wholly charismatic and almost brilliant politician with a penchant for drama – like holding his cabinet meetings underwater to draw attention to climate change, a phrase that most people shrugged about back in 2009 – possibly thought he was the MDP and the MDP was him, a fatal flaw with many ambitious men. He might also have thought that despite being in exile in 2018, the country had voted for him in absentia.
Whether or not he was right, the reality was somewhat different. Solih has held this geographically diverse country and its many alliance partners, both on the religious Right and on the Centre-Left, well together over the last five years. The coalition has survived because Solih, mostly in a dark business suit, has kept his cool and his patience and smiled through the worst political nightmares even as Nasheed hogged the radio waves.
In 2018, Solih and Nasheed were partners, in 2023, they are rivals. In the middle of these last five years, Nasheed almost lost his life in an assassination attempt. But the man has literally, as well as mindfully, stitched himself together again and seems ready to take on the political challenge of his life. He is much more focused, much less angry, even meditative – and totally pro-India.
Nasheed believes that the PPM’s “India Out” campaign must go with the wind in the Maldives, never to return. He is willing to break with the PPM if the PPM doesn’t agree.
The news from Male is that PPM has agreed to drop its “India Out” campaign – they realise, too, that if they want to have a stab at defeating Solih and the MDP, they need Nasheed and his new-found Democrats party. That the fulcrum of any possible alliance between the PPM and the Democrats is Nasheed. That it is him, and him only, that will make the difference between possible victory and humiliating defeat.
And since Nasheed won’t compromise with anything anti-India, the rumour is that the powerful Yameen, who controls the PPM from inside his jail cell, will drop the “India Out” campaign.
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Shahid wants India’s support
So why is Shahid in town, and why is India giving him the full MEA treatment? Clearly, Shahid is looking for Indian support – Delhi has already given Solih and the MDP its blessings. But Shahid may also be trying to check if Delhi’s feelings for his former friend and ally, Nasheed, have changed or remain the same.
The thing about islanders – and island nations – is that fickleness is a much-admired quality. Delhi understands that well. After all, independent India’s rulers have also inherited the gene that allows them to sidle up to and side with the man who wields the sengol. Across the hundreds of years, from the time of the Ghaznavid slave kings, the Mughals, the East India Company and the British Raj, the smell of power has attracted the people of both continental and peninsular India.
The Maldives lies just a few hundred km beyond Thiruvananthapuram. Lakshadweep still speaks a variation of Dhivehi. Why should things be that different in Male?
Chalo Dilli or Dilli Dur Ast? Abdulla Shahid’s visit to the capital will be fascinating to watch.
Jyoti Malhotra is a senior consulting editor at ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)