Category: People

Maldives’ Yellow Brick Road to State of Emergency: Part I

by Azra Naseem

On 4 November 2015, President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom declared a State of Emergency in the Maldives, suspending along with other laws seven different fundamental rights guaranteed by its democratic Constitution. Even as his Attorney General announced the executive decree, the Foreign Ministry led by Yameen’s niece, Dunya Maumoon, was reassuring the world everything was ‘calm and normal’ in the Maldives. Cognitive dissonance between simultaneous announcements and a world of difference between things said and things done, have been hallmarks of Yameen’s regime. The state of emergency is the latest development in a month during which the leader’s paranoid, perhaps even schizophrenic, delusions and hallucinations have become the lived experience of the Maldivian people. For now, the world is looking at the developments, aghast. Soon, however, its attention will wonder, and details of this extraordinary time in Maldivian history can easily be forgotten. This series will record some of the details for posterity, before the Gayooms re-write history as they have a habit of doing. This part discusses events along the road to the current state of emergency. Accounts of later developments will follow in shorter posts as events unfold.  

The curious case of the exploding boat

On 28 September 2015 an explosion went off on President Yameen’s speedboat, Finifenmaa [Rose] as she cruised in to dock at the official presidential jetty in Male’. The President, his wife Fathmath Ibrahim, and an entourage of about twenty aides and associates were on board. The first couple were returning from Hajj (as all local media accounts of the incident were careful to note and repeat endlessly). The precise location of the explosion, as investigations later revealed, was right under the President’s usual seat. For whatever reason, it was First Lady Fathmath Ibrahim who took the President’s seat that day. Consequently, the President escaped unscathed. Lady Fathmath, however, remained in hospital until yesterday, reportedly nursing fractures to ‘bones connected to the spine’. MedamBoysAt first visited by many admirers, some of whom queued outside the hospital for hours with a white rose each to catch a glimpse of her, she was soon relegated to the back benches of national consciousness as events became progressively more dramatic with each day following the blast.    

For several days after the explosion, there was silence from the president. The public was given no official explanation. The matter was being investigated, and there would be no comment. The people, along with the media, were left to speculate. Selected bits of information fed to the people included news of forensic teams arriving from the FBI, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia to ‘assist Maldives Police Service with the investigation’. They reportedly stayed on the president’s retreat on the island of Aarah, and collected samples from Finifenmaa. The main theory, fed by Presidential Affairs Minister, Mohamed Shareef, suggested the blast was an accident caused by an electric or mechanical failure.

An alternative narrative, suggested on 1 October 2015, came in the form of a blog post, ‘The man who wasn’t there’, written by a Dr Kharusath. It not only suggested the blast on Finifenmaa was deliberate, it also pointed the finger at Ahmed Adeeb, Yameen’s Vice President, as having planned and plotted the attack with the intention of killing Yameen. The writer suggested the young Adeeb’s failure to be at the airport to greet the President marked him as a guilty man. The post suggested that young Adeeb—a former model and footballer who has since put on a few stones and is known as a material boy who likes the finer things in life—had bought an expensive suit in anticipation of being sworn in as the new President that afternoon. At first the blog post went largely unnoticed.    

On 7 October, 10 days after the blast, Yameen’s Spokesperson, Ibrahim Muaz Ali [or TV Mwah as he is called unofficially on social media], summoned the media for an extraordinary press conference at 1:00 in the morning. He showed reporters a video of the blast in slow-motion and officially, dramatically, declared the blast to have been an attempt to assassinate the president. No one was allowed to ask questions.

With confirmation that Yameen was investigating the blast as an attempt on his life, @Karusathey’s blog and its accusations against Adeeb began to take on more prominence. By then three members of the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF), two of them with access to the state armoury, had been arrested. Two members of Adeeb’s security detail were also suspended indefinitely. The soldiers taken captive then are still under military detention.

SaudiCakeAdeeb appeared on Sangu, a television channel he funds, to defend himself and declare his unchanging loyalty to Yameen. “I will stand wherever Yameen tells me to.” Yameen allowed Adeeb to feed some cake to the increasing number of Saudi officials in the Maldives, then  decided the best place for Adeeb at the time was China. On 13 October, two weeks after the ‘Finifenmaa Blast’, off he went to Beijing to represent Maldives at an investment forum to which no one came.

500% trust – #ItsTooMuch

On the same day Adeeb left for China, Yameen fired his second Defence Minister, Ex-army General Moosa Ali Jaleel, who was appointed to the post after Yameen’s first Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim was sentenced to 11 years in jail for planning to overthrow the government. Both Nazim and Jaleel were part of the events that prematurely ended former President Mohamed Nasheed’s government. Jaleel was also a close associate of Adeeb. Jaleel was fired but escaped jail, the fate of all others who cross Yameen. As it happens, he is a close family member of the Lady Fathmath. This, in Yameen’s court, is called due process.

While Adeeb was in China, Yameen gathered members of his ‘coalition’ together in what was said to be a ‘top secret’ meeting. It was akin to Don Corleone gathering The Family together. Phones were not allowed in, for confidentiality reasons. But, members of this family being Maldivian, proceedings were reported to the media almost verbatim by some participants as soon as they left Mulee Aage, The PPM’s Family Home. Some of what was said was meant to be ‘leaked’, like Yameen’s claim he had “500% trust” in his Vice President.

Aden's Fair-weather FriendsSome other matters were perhaps not meant to be revealed: like Yameen’s assertion that moneys MPs had been receiving [in envelopes outside of their hefty pay packets] came from his own stash and not Adeeb’s. In other words, the bribes they had been receiving came from Yameen and not Adeeb; the young Mr Vice President had merely been the Middle Man. MPs were assured their payments would continue—as long as they publicly declared, and proved, their loyalty to Yameen. All who had been copying up to Adeeb would do as Yameen asked–a majority of Maldivian MPs follow where the money leads.

As is customary for Yameen, his words and actions were far removed from each other. He declared 500% trust in Adeeb but immediately after the statement, started raiding the homes and offices of Adeeb’s closest family members and associates. Among the most high profile searches were a police and army raid on the house of super-rich business man Hamid Ismail—or Hamid Seytu [Hamid from the corner shop] in common parlance—a member of Adeeb’s extended family. He was later arrested in Malaysia, and deported to Male’ against Malaysian laws. Hamid is now in jail; as is a man who took a picture of him arriving at the Male’ International Airport. Similar raids were conducted of the office of the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Company (MMPRC) and of the home of its Managing Director Abdulla Ziyath, who is also now in jail. By then it was obvious Yameen’s so-called 500% trust in Adeeb was actually 500% percent suspicion. Nobody was surprised when Yameen decided to have Adeeb arrested on suspicion of involvement in the blast on the Finifenmaa.

On the eve of Adeeb’s early morning return from China on 24 October, Maldives Police Service closed off access to the so-called Green Zone—where protests and mass gatherings are banned for ‘security reasons’. The boundaries of this area is often fluid, moving according to whims of the security forces and have, at times, included the airport. The idea behind raising security levels in the Green Zone was supposedly to ‘protect Adeeb’ from an alleged threat to his life. It was another among hundreds of lies to the public by the government and security forces since the Finifenmaa saga began.In reality it was intended to stop Adeeb’s supporters from congregating at the airport, or at the jetties in Male’, to welcome him back. The police need not have bothered.

AdeebSupportersAdeeb’s ‘supporters’, who had deemed no burden too heavy to carry for their man, and seemed to number in their thousands at the height of his popularity—when he drove around town on motorbikes of various sizes with pockets full of money and bagfuls of swag—abandoned the VP before his plane touched down. Hundreds of t-shirts printed with his face, were dumped on the streets, cast aside like Adeeb himself.

IStandWithAdeebAdeebGirl‘Adeeb’s Babes’, a bevy of carefully groomed young women who framed themselves in pink to declare their support for him, never made it out on the streets in solidarity. Some stayed home with their t-shirts on and, shortly after, left the country altogether. And like many MPs who represent them, several hurried to delete all evidence of their support for Adeeb from the public sphere and began anew their efforts to cuddle up to Yameen instead.

Wasn’t me

The morning of 25 October brought the first public appearance of Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom since the “assassination attempt.” It was a sour-faced, arrogant rant that lasted 45 minutes; a tirade in which he attempted to defend his track-record as a president who got rid of two Defence Ministers and two Vice Presidents in two short years of being a president. According to him, they all betrayed his trust and conspired against him. The last thing he wanted to do was get rid of them, but their betrayals left him with no choice. He accused Adeeb of colluding with MDP, failing to cooperate with the investigation into the blast, and also failing to side with police and military in their suspicions and activities against Hamid Ismail and Ziyath. Former Defence Minister and coup-maker Mohamed Nazim had tried to get members of the military to stand against their Commander in Chief.

YameenJameelPinkThe first former Vice President, Mohamed Jameel Ahmed who wallowed knee-deep in pink with Yameen during the presidential campaign, had been totally incompetent, according to Yameen. [The Vice President, who fled the country ahead of impeachment, has been living in London. He married for the third time while in exile, and seems to have spent his honeymoon and all the days since Tweeting 140 character messages absolving himself of all the blame for unlawful actions taken by a government of which he was an integral part. All the while, he defines himself as ‘Former Vice President’ – to the man he is making all these accusations against.] 

Yameen also assured in his speech that ‘youth associations’—which many took to be a euphemism for violent gangs with whom both Yameen and his VP are known to have intimate connections—will continue to get their moneys due through an alternative channel in the absence of Adeeb. He had never spoken at such length to Maldivians before, and thus had never before revealed the true extent of his paranoia and suspicions, or the level of his disgust for conventions and values of running a democratic government. Throughout it all he maintained he did not want to fire his Vice President, but had been left with no choice. Perhaps his own words below can paint a more accurate picture of his feelings:

Yameen

The gist of Yameen’s speech was that while the Vice President had been his closest ally, and had forced a Constitutional amendment to make Adeeb his deputy, he hadn’t a clue what the younger man had been up to. Everything wrong in the country since Yameen came to power was Adeeb’s doing. Yameen was as white and pure as a drop of coconut milk.

 What followed the above is a week in which several bombs were found, lost, disposed of, transported live across Male’; forensic science was deemed hocus pocus; a State of Emergency was declared; MDP responded with an Emergency Tea Party; and a Sri Lankan fish buyer was arrested on suspicion of being an assassin.  All this and more in The Yellow Brick Road, Part II.

The Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling

lightningbolt

by H Abdulghafoor

It seemed like a blip in media time.

However, the court ruling to stone a woman to death for adultery issued by a magistrate in the Maldivian island of Gemanafushi in Gaaf Alif Atoll cannot be forgotten simply because it was revoked the same day by the benevolence of the Supreme Court.

Around sunset on Sunday 18 October 2015, the horrific news broke. By midnight the same day, the swift intervention undermining the ruling by the highest court in the land made the shocking news seem like a particularly bad rumour. It is of course, not a bad rumour – it is a very real travesty of justice or what is otherwise referred in social media circles as #MvInjustice. A common concept well understood by the Maldivian public.

The Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling is in fact a social lightning flash that happened inside a political hurricane.

The thunder will take time to rumble into earshot.

Its reverberations will be felt far into the future.

The Maldives has had a history of brutality and savagery within its criminal “justice” system. However, as a member of the United Nations, the country has acceded to the International Bill of Human Rights which gives it a strong veneer of respectability among the family of nations. The Maldives is also party to most of the core UN human rights conventions including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, since 2004) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, since 1993). The country is also party to the Optional Protocols to both these Conventions. This year, the Maldives celebrates its 50th year as a member of the UN. In fact, the Maldives has performed so well in its engagement with the UN human rights system that the country became a member of the UN Human Rights Council in 2010. It remains a member, having been re-elected in 2014. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs jubilantly embraced the prestige of this membership declaring that

The Maldives stood for the voiceless in the international society; for the issues that affect the very fundamental values of human rights yet, hardly get a mention in global human rights debate; and it stood for helping the vulnerable and emerging democracies to cultivate the values of human rights in their societies.

Evidently, the country’s intentions to advocate for the voiceless and vulnerable are honourable.

The concerned and thoughtful public in the country immediately began to ponder the gravity of the unprecedented development that took place in Gemanafushi. What has this country become? Where are we headed? Stoning is an atrocity that we hear of happening in “other” “backward” and “uncivilised” countries with the greatest disregard to the human rights of citizens. It is something witnessed only on film, told in stories about foreign lands. What kind of judge delivers such a barbaric ruling, to initiate a practice that has never been seen in the Maldives – a country with a people proud of its long 800 year Islamic history, unfailing in their devotion to Islam as a collective? How able is this magistrate to issue such a ruling? How sane is he? Is he in fact, fit for responsible public office? Such questions would roll incessantly in the minds of those who think. The Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling is a seismic shock to the body politic.

The practice of stoning conjures up the kind of barbarism the Hindu cultural practice of Sati or widow burning does, which took place in India historically. Linda Heaphy in her researched article on Sati wrote that

Sati was regarded as a barbaric practice by the Islamic rulers of the Mogul period, and many tried to halt the custom with laws and edicts banning the practice.

The fact that Sati was deemed unacceptable by the Islamic Mughal Emperors of India during the 16th and 17th centuries indicates the rejection of that horrific traditional practice by Muslims of the Asia region, even at that time in history. Sati was finally outlawed in 1827 by the Governor General of India “claiming it had no sound theological basis.”

Stoning is such a practice in Islamic cultural history. It is a disputed and debated topic by Muslim scholars, having no consensus. Although still practised in ultraconservative societies such as Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, it is banned by other Muslim nations such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia and Algeria. Stoning is rejected as barbaric and inhuman by progressive thinkers and human rights advocates around the world, including in those countries where it is practised.

The Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling is especially problematic because the Maldives has never considered this practice as a valid form of punishment in its long Islamic history. In that ruling, the punishment was meted out to a mother of five children who allegedly “confessed” to having a child out of wedlock. In the Maldives, the vast majority of adultery convictions and the customary punishment of public flogging are carried out against women. Available data shows that in 85% of cases, women are convicted for adultery as opposed to 15% men. In the Gemanafushi case, the complete absence of any reference to the involvement of a man in the conception of the child is telling, and unsurprising. Adultery allegations are just one area where women experience systemic discrimination.

According to Iranian scholar, Muslim feminist and Musawah advocate Ziba Mir-Hosseini,

Islamic sources of law are explained in many ways that allow for the discrimination of women. We often hear about stoning as punishment for adultery, or practices like female circumcision, but there are also laws that affect a woman’s right to education, employment opportunities, inheritance rights, dress and freedom to consent to a marriage. ….

There are women who might get stoned to death at any time, and we can’t help them right now, even though I know that stoning shouldn’t be part of Islamic law.

The campaign Violence Is Not Our Culture says that in the Islamic Penal Code of Iran, a single judge may rule “to his personal opinion instead of hard evidence” and “most stoning sentences … are issued not on the basis of testimony or confession but on the judge’s “knowledge” or “intuition”. In the Gemanafushi case, it is unclear whether the sentencing was based on the intuition of the magistrate, although a confession is alleged. However, the Supreme Court’s statement nullifying the ruling said that the sentencing was not conducted in line with judicial principles and procedures.

In the patriarchal society of the Maldives, it is evident that interpretations of Islam have been increasingly radicalised, undermining and solidifying ideologies that view women as subordinate to and placed at the service of men. An alarming development that helps to explain what is happening in the Maldives today is captured by the Maldivian Democracy Network’s (MDN) recent analysis of the Islamic curriculum in Maldivian schools.   The study found that the Islam textbook for grades 8 to 12 (13 to 17 year age group) taught that the religious rulings on “unlawful sexual relationships” involved the following :

1 – The man who is married and has consummated his marriage shall be sentenced to death by stoning.

2 – The man who is unmarried shall be lashed 100 times and banished for a year.

3 – The slave’s punishment will be half of that of a freeman, therefore 50 lashes.

Besides endorsing execution by stoning as “Islamic”, the text implies the acceptability of slavery as normative in Islamic culture. The fact that the Maldives has signed international treaties which obligate the State to respect, promote, protect and fulfil the human rights of citizens and categorically reject practices that violate basic human rights – including capital punishment and slavery – do not feature in school textbooks. Instead, the narrative provided to school children in their grade 9 textbook informs them that

there is a propaganda effort by the West to elect adherents of ‘Western ideology’ … to policymaking and governing positions in Islamic communities.

The MDN study highlights the presence of xenophobia and intolerance towards other faith groups within the school textbooks, observing that “even Islamic sects other than Sunni Islam are categorically maligned under this curriculum”.

According to Violence is Not Our Culture, the global campaign to stop violence against women in the name of culture, stoning is not endorsed in the Qur’an.

… there is no mention of stoning in the Quran, and the practice is only implied in the Hadith in the context of the Prophet Muhammad’s dealing with Jewish Law.

In fact, the practice of stoning is considered to have a history in Greek and Jewish culture, among others. It is also considered by some sources to be a pre-Islamic Arab cultural practice. The fact that a practice historically attributed to Judaism is being accepted as “Islamic” is a curious irony in the Maldives context where antisemitism is palpable among conservative segments of the population.

The judicial system in the Maldives has been under great scrutiny and study over the last decade. According to the August 2015 mission report to the Maldives by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), from 2003, the education of judges involved a “part-time one-year certificate course in “Justice Studies””. Further, “many of the sitting judges … had little or no formal legal education.” To address this, many sitting judges are currently undertaking higher education courses, as is the case with the Gemanafushi magistrate who issued the stoning ruling. The appropriately entitled ICJ report “Justice Adrift : Rule of Law and Political Crisis in the Maldives” observed further systemic issues, as described in this extract.

A number of recent criminal proceedings have displayed a pattern of violations of due process and fair trial rights under the ICCPR and the Maldives Constitution. The mission observed that the Maldives has no procedural laws such as a criminal procedure code, evidence code or codes of conduct for judges or prosecutors. The mission noted that the absence of these basic legal frameworks for criminal proceedings have helped enable courts and prosecutors to conduct criminal proceedings in an often arbitrary or biased manner, without regard for internationally recognised procedural safeguards and other fair trial guarantees.

The Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling is an indicator of the convulsions Maldivian society is experiencing in its current fragile state – socially, culturally and politically. It is an indicator of grievous political irresponsibility, the absence of just intentions toward the public good and toward good governance. It is indicative of an approaching tipping point resulting from years of neglect of the education system and curricula. Furthermore, it is the consequence of the unwillingness of key stakeholders to establish a functional justice system based on the provisions of the 2008 Constitution. It is above all a critical indicator of the loss of identity, common values of humanity, connection to community and cultural coherence. The combined effect of intolerance, radicalisation and weak governance produces a toxic social result, which is the lightning flash witnessed in the Gemanafushi Stoning Ruling. It must be rejected wholeheartedly and vocally by the Maldivian public, to reclaim their identity as a peaceful and justice loving people.

Keeping up with the authoritarians

YameenFathun2

by Azra Naseem

The Maldives is no longer a democracy. For some reason, this is a fact which most observers, especially from the outside, are unwilling to accept. All statements and reports from the international community note ‘with concern’ the many actions of Yameen’s regime that fall well within the boundaries of authoritarianism, yet continue to insist the Maldivian democracy still exists – it’s just ‘at risk’.

According to experts, modern democratic regimes meet four minimum criteria: 1) the executive and Majlis are chosen through elections that are open, free, and fair; 2) virtually all adults possess the right to vote; 3) political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom to criticise the government without reprisal, are broadly protected; and 4) elected authorities possess real authority to govern, in that they are not subject to tutelary control of military or clerical leaders.⁠1

Which of these criteria are met by the current Maldivian regime?

In terms of No.1, the electoral process, the Supreme Court’s interventions in the presidential election of 2013 made a mockery of the electoral process. The many tricks and tactics used to draw out the election until it eventually ended in a win for Yameen are by now well documented⁠2 and cannot be described by anyone who understands the principles and norms of democracy as ‘democratic.’

The Majlis elections in 2014, which was preceded by Supreme Court-engineered firing of President of the Elections Commission Fuwad Thowfeek—noted for his integrity—was characterised by vote buying and selling. As the EU Observers noted, while⁠3 the election was ‘calm and orderly’, it was marred by ‘allegations of prevalent vote-buying, excessive campaign expenditure and abuse of state resources’⁠4.

Another death blow to the electoral process has been the systematic imprisonment of all opposition leaders. Almost all opposition leaders are in jail: former president Mohamed Nasheed for 13 years, charged and convicted of terrorism; leader of Adhaalath Party Sheikh Imran Abdullah, charged with terrorism and in detention without trial now for over a 100 days; former Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim, convicted of weapons smuggling and jailed for 11 years. Those who haven’t been put behind bars, like 2013 presidential candidate Qasim Ibrahim, have either been coerced out of the political arena through threats to personal freedom and business interests while others—like the Chairman of MDP Ali Waheed, Deputy Leader of Jumhooree Party (JP) Ameen Ibrahim and impeached Vice President Mohamed Jameel Ahmed—have chosen to live in exile rather than spend what could be decades in prison. This state of affairs ensures that, when (or if) the next election comes around it would be, for all intents and purposes, non-competitive.

Number 2 on the list, the right for virtually all adults to vote still exists. But based on the experiences discussed above—judicial interventions, the now deeply embedded custom of vote buying and selling, patronage, blackmail and corruption—it is clear to see that the mere existence of that right does not ensure its contribution to the strengthening of democracy.

No. 3—the protection of civil and political rights—has suffered equally greatly. It is not simply leaders of the opposition the regime has clamped down on. From 8 February 2012 onwards, it became the norm to quell opposition protests with brutal violence. Pepper spray, violent beatings, and imprisonment were prevalent throughout the regime of caretaker president Waheed and during the protests in the lead-up to and during the 2013 presidential elections; and it has been standard practise after Yameen’s election. The arrest of over 200 protesters on 1 May 2015 and their subsequent unlawful detentions, mistreatment and intimidation—combined with the continued imprisonment of Nasheed and coercion of MDP—have effectively put a stop to all opposition rallies.

MariyaDidi

It is not just activists and mass protesters who have been silenced. There are virtually no independent institutions or civil society organisations left with the capacity or courage to criticise the government. The independence of the Elections Commission and the Human Rights Commission was taken away through Supreme Court instigated suo motu cases, while all other institutions, such as the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) as just one example, have been rendered toothless by appointing regime loyalists as members. The recently published report by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) chronicles the many steps taken against cvil society organisations since 2013, which all contribute towards elimination of civil and political rights.

And, when it comes to No.4, the possession of ‘real authority’ by elected officials to govern—this now applies only to Yameen and members of his Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM). The entire local governance system has been dismantled, and elected council members rendered powerless. In the Majlis, PPM and its allies enjoy the majority power needed to pass whatever Bills they propose, and where an absolute majority is needed—as seen in the machinations that saw MDP voting with PPM for two controversial constitutional amendments—it resorts to blackmail, coercion, patronage and the usual web of corruption and deceit to engineer the result it desires. Elected MPs have also lost their power through amendments made to Majlis rules such as the recent abolishing of the requirement for debate and discussion before passing bills, and the new regulation which says only PPM members can propose any legislation or amendments related to state finances.

Clearly, the Maldives is failing to meet the minimum criteria required of a modern democracy in all sectors. Experts admit that violations of these criteria occur in even the most established democracies. However, in such cases, the violations are not systematic enough to ‘fundamentally alter the playing field between government and opposition.’ In the Maldives, the playing field is not just failing to be level, it has been almost totally annihilated. The Maldivian Democratic Party is at its weakest since inception, its power to mobilise supporters and lead opposition activities held hostage to a) government’s unlawful detention and mistreatment of its charismatic leader, Nasheed, and b) to the threat to freedom and security of all its supporters.

So what kind of a regime is it that currently exists in the Maldives?

As the ICJ report noted, the Maldives’ transition to democracy was flawed. While Nasheed managed to instigate several democratic reforms, many key elements of the state apparatus remained within the control of the former Gayoom regime. For most of the transition period under Nasheed, the Majlis remained under opposition control, not acting as a responsible branch of the opposition but existing as a bulwark against much needed democratic reforms. The judiciary, too, remained in the grips of the same forces, its key members acting against the new democratic constitution rather than with it. As diligently chronicled by former member of the Judicial Services Commission, Aishath Velezinee, MDP was at times unable—and at other times unwilling—to instigate the actions necessary for change in the right direction.

The Maldivian democracy in transition under Nasheed can therefore be described as being, a ‘weak’ or ‘flawed’ or even a ‘diminished’ democracy; nevertheless it was one that met the minimum requirements of one. A difficult transition experience is neither unexpected nor unusual, as seen by the many African and Eastern European countries that adopted democracy in the post-Cold War era. And, as was seen from these countries, authoritarian reversal is not an unusual ending to such a transition.

waheed-maldivesOnce the controversial end to Nasheed’s government was accepted by CONI as ‘legal and constitutional’ with ‘no coup, no duress, no mutiny’, possibilities opened up for the ‘flawed democracy’ to change into a hybrid regime veering away from democracy towards competitive authoritarianism. When caretaker president Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik took the reigns of the country, this is the direction in which he—with the Gayoom loyalists he signed with—firmly steered the country.

In a competitive authoritarian regime, violations of the four criteria discussed above are frequent:

Although elections are regularly held and generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results. Journalists, opposition politicians, and other government critics maybe spied on, threatened, harassed, or arrested. Members of the opposition may be jailed, exiled, or—less frequently—even assaulted or murdered. Regimes characterised by such abuses cannot be called democratic. (Levitsky and Way 2002)

As discussed previously, the presidential election of 2013, was less than democratic. Waheed’s rule was marked by major clamp downs on opposition, the brutal murder of MP Afrasheem Ali, and several attacks on journalists and media organisations. All such activities multiplied after Yameen’s election. Three young men, including a journalist, have been missing for over a year. The government has failed to investigate and, in the case of the disappeared journalist, has actively obstructed efforts to find him. While media freedom remains, Maldives has slipped from 51st place in the World Press Freedom Index in 2012 to 112th place in 2015. Added to this are the threats and actions against the opposition previously discussed, and the government’s control of the judiciary and the legislature — all hallmarks of competitive authoritarianism.

Clearly, the Maldivian democracy has long since passed the ‘at risk’ stage. It no longer exists. The question that should be asked is, under what sort of authoritarianism is the country in? Is it competitive, or full-scale authoritarianism?

YameenQayoom

In a competitive authoritarian regime, although not a democracy, there are still arenas of contestation through which opposition forces ‘may periodically challenge, weaken, and occasionally even defeat autocratic rulers’. These are: a) the electoral arena; b) the legislature; c) the judiciary; and c) the media.

In competitive authoritarian regimes the electoral process can be marked by large-scale abuses of state power. The media is often biased, and there is widespread abuse and harassment of opposition activists and candidates. But, major opposition parties and candidates still compete, the elections are generally free of massive fraud, and international observers are allowed to monitor the process. This (apart from the extra-legal interventions of the Supreme Court) largely applies to what happened in the 2013 presidential election in the Maldives.

Things have, however, progressed far beyond that stage now. What is seen happening in the electoral process at present—such as the routine imprisonment of opposition figures—are hallmarks of full-scale authoritarianism where elections are either devoid of any serious competition, or are not held at all. At the level of local government, the electoral process has all but disappeared. When it came to the latest round of local council elections, the newly elected Elections Commission—populated by regime loyalists—decided the process wasn’t worth the required MVR100,000 or so. Furthermore, if an increasingly loud media murmur is to be believed, plans are now in the offing to extend the presidential term limits from five years to eight years through yet another constitutional amendment through the Majlis.

Looking at the legislative arena, things are not any rosier. In a competitive authoritarian regime, the legislature—although controlled by a ruling party majority—remains a place where the opposition can, even if occasionally, put up a good fight; and can still be a public platform from which to criticise the regime. This was largely the case with the Maldivian Majlis during caretaker Waheed’s regime. Recent developments in the Majlis in relation to the constitutional amendments, however, proved that it no longer serves as a people’s parliament, representing differing opinions and voices. It, too, has become a hallmark of full-scale authoritarianism where ‘conflict between the legislature and the executive branch is virtually unthinkable.’

ConstitutionThat the third arena—the judiciary—is under the complete control of the government is not an argument that anyone seriously contests, except the executive itself. Dozens of reports have been published by a whole range of international organisations from the UN to the ICJ censuring its lack of independence and corruption, and criticism has flowed from individual states, regional bodies and supranational entities. During Waheed’s competitive authoritarian regime, the widespread corruption, patronage and blackmail inherited from the Gayoom era remained in the judiciary. But there was room—although very little—for individual judges to express dissenting opinions. Several decisions by the executive since Yameen’s assumption of office, brought into effect via the compliant Majlis—such as the restructuring of the Supreme Court bench—have, however, destroyed any wriggle room for independent thought or action in the judiciary.

The media, is perhaps the only one of the four arenas which full-scale authoritarian regimes usually control that is not yet fully within the grasp of the Yameen regime. This is due not for the lack of trying, but to the impossibility of imposing such control over the kind of globally inter-connected media that exists today. Spying—both traditional and cyber—on dissenting voices by the police is common place, as is harassment and intimidation. And, as discussed before, the working environment for many journalists is far from safe. On top of this, the regime is now set to pass two new Bills—one on Freedom of Expression and one on Counterterrorism—which are set to curtail dissent and opposition to degrees not seen since the transition to democracy in 2008.

In addition to all this is the Yameen regime’s total dismissal of international democratic opinion, treaties and laws, and a deliberate foreign policy shift away from the democratic international community in favour of China, and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Except for the fact that the Maldives is not (yet) a threat to international security, the regime could easily be described as a ‘rogue state’.

And yet—despite all the evidence which shows the Maldives fitting neatly into the existing frameworks of what defines at best a competitive authoritarian regime and at worst a full-scale authoritarian regime—leaders of established democracies, and international stakeholders in the global democratisation efforts, continue describing the Maldives as ‘a democracy at risk’. This is clearly no longer the case.

Why the reluctance to let go of the ‘democracy’ label? Does it arise from a fear of acknowledging defeat and admitting that despite the international community’s interest and (sometimes admirable) efforts to help democratise the Maldives, it has failed to take root and succeed? Or is it simply because international actors are not keeping up with the authoritarians in the Maldives?

This must change. Any efforts to restore democracy to Maldives must start with the acknowledgement that however successful the transition appeared in the beginning, it has been deliberately failed. A fresh start that learns from the past, and knows what we are dealing with at present, is necessary.

1 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, ‘The rise of competitive authoritarianism’, Journal of Democracy 13 (2) (2002), 51-65:53

2 EU Election Observation Mission, ‘Republic of Maldives parliamentary elections 22 March 2014: final report’, available at http://www.eueom.eu/files/pressreleases/english/eu-eom-maldives2014-final-report_en.pdf (27 August 2015).

See also: International Commission of Jurists and South Asians for Human Rights, ‘Justice adrift: rule of law and political crisis in the Maldives’, August 2015, available at http://icj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Maldives-Justice-Adrift-Rule-of-Law-Publications-fact-finding-report-2015-ENG.pdf (28 August 2015).

3 Commission of National Inquiry (CONI), August 2012

4 . EU Election Observation Mission, ‘Republic of Maldives parliamentary elections 22 March 2014: final report’, available at http://www.eueom.eu/files/pressreleases/english/eu-eom-maldives2014-final-report_en.pdf (27 August 2015).