South Block is tired of ousted Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s “maverick” approach and violent street protests, and is busy reviving its three-decade-long ties with former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Events over the past week reflect a decisive shift in India’s approach towards the eight-month-old political crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago since Nasheed’s resignation under pressure in February.
First, India invited Gayoom to New Delhi. The former dictator, who ruled Maldives for 30 years before losing the country’s first multi-party elections in 2008 to Nasheed, discussed the Maldivian political situation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday for nearly an hour.
There was further bad news for Nasheed during defence minister A.K. Antony’s three-day visit to the Maldives, which concluded yesterday. Antony inaugurated a hospital built with Indian assistance for the Maldivian security forces and laid the foundation stone for a training centre for security personnel, to be built with Indian aid.
These pro-security forces moves indicate that New Delhi is building bridges with the old guard in the island nation.
Nasheed has accused the security forces, both military and police, of engineering the February “coup” at the behest of Gayoom and his cronies in the administration. He has been alleging that both forces opposed him because of his attempts to curtail the unbridled powers they enjoyed in the Gayoom-run “police state”.
But India views training and equipping the Maldivian security forces as an important step towards maritime security, particularly against piracy in the Indian Ocean region.
Apart from the customary meetings with the Maldivian defence minister, Vice-President, and President Mohamed Waheed, Antony also met junior foreign minister Dhunya Maumoon. Dhunya, 42, is Gayoom’s daughter and, many believe, his political successor. Gayoom has publicly stated he will not fight the next presidential election in end-2013.
Unlike other Indian officials who have visited the Maldives since February, Antony did not meet Nasheed.
South Block’s decision to invite Gayoom became easy after a Maldivian commission of inquiry on July 20 termed the February transfer of power constitutional. The commission had been reconstituted to include a retired judge from Singapore as co-chair and also a nominee of Nasheed’s after complaints from the former President.
New Delhi has since February maintained that the transfer of power was constitutional. But a day after resigning from office, Nasheed had accused the Indian high commissioner to Male, Dnyaneshwar Mulay, of having misled New Delhi. He claimed he was ousted “almost at gunpoint”.
Nasheed and his supporters then hit the streets protesting the “coup”, which resulted in violence and destruction of property. The commission report’s conclusions were again met with violent protests by Nasheed supporters in the first week of September. South Block’s advice to Nasheed to exercise restraint went unheeded.
Sources said Gayoom’s visit and meeting with Singh was a clear message to Nasheed. New Delhi, which provides substantial aid to the Maldives, is no longer willing to intervene on Nasheed’s behalf considering his fast declining popularity and continued “maverick” behaviour that threatens to wreck the archipelago’s tourism-dependent economy.
At the meeting with Gayoom, Singh “stressed the need for all stakeholders in Maldives to take forward the process of political dialogue, to work together to resolve the current political situation and to maintain an environment of peace and stability in the country”, an external affairs ministry statement said.
Indian officials believe that Gayoom’s Progressive Party of Maldives, the largest in the Maldivian parliament, and his nominee, who could be his daughter Dhunya, will be in a strong position to win the next election.
India, which earlier admired Nasheed the activist and his work to bring democracy to the Maldivian people, now views him as a man in too much of a hurry to change a deeply religious and traditional society. The approach had won Nasheed admirers in the West but backfired with most of his people, the bureaucracy and the security forces.
Comments