MALDIVES: Votes For Presidential System:

Source: SAAG.ORG

By Dr. Chandrasekharan

In the ‘provisional’ results that have just come in on the referendum conducted on 18th August in Maldives, a majority of the people have voted for the presidential form of government.

The Poll results as known showed that the Presidential form of government got support from 93,042 voters (62 percent) compared with 57,109 ( 38 percent) voters who voted for the parliamentary form of government. While the total number of eligible voters in Maldives was given earlier as 125,000 including the newly added voters between 18 and 21 years of age, it is now said that the total number of eligible voters was 194,000 out of which 150,151 have voted. This comes to 77.4 percent of the people of having voted in the referendum though at no time the Press or official releases gave any indication of heavy polling. The opposition has termed it as an “unrealistic turnover.”

A Commonwealth Observers’ team was present to oversee the referendum and their report as well as those of Human rights Commission are expected within a few days. Though there were mutual accusations of intimidation and rigging in specific places with many complaints filed before the Election commission, voting was generally peaceful.

While the referendum result is being projected as a personal victory for President Gayoom and his reform agenda, it is our view that the voting has not been so overwhelming in his favour as it happened in earlier elections and secondly the 62 percent voting was not all for DRP, but also to three other parties -namely the Islamic Democratic Party, Adaalathu Party and the Maldivian Socialist democratic party. One unfortunate incident was that a ruling party MP (DRP) in condemning the Parliamentary system in the referendum campaign, dragged the Indian parliamentary system by declaring that many Indian parliamentarians are rapists, robbers, criminals etc.!

Some over enthusiastic MDP supporters made it out as if it is a referendum to choose between President Gayoom and the MDP Chairman Mohamed Nasheed ( Anni). It need not be so and given a situation where the people have voted democratically for the first time, Anni should take credit for mustering singlehandedly almost 40 percent of the votes on an issue which has only an indirect bearing on the future system of governance and not on the incumbents.

One may ask why President Gayoom did not wait for the referendum to be over to announce his candidature. He is into his sixth term and has not so far groomed any senior politician to take up the top post. It was said that he wanted to see the reform agenda through in his time but then his announcement of his intention to stand for the next election took many by surprise. ( Not SAAG) Some claim that the President has no intention of staying on indefinitely and that he may quit by 2010! His continued stewardship after the sixth term under the new dispensation is unlikely to be smooth and we see top cabinet ministers leaving the government even now,.in protest.

Two senior ministers of Gayoom’s cabinet- the Attorney General Dr. Hassan Saeed and the Justice Minister Mohamed Jameel resigned from their posts on 6th August. The Press Conference the ministers gave at Dharubaauge, Maldives international convention centre showed the internal cracks developing within the ruling party and the differences with President Gayoom himself. The ministers made th following comments-

• They were resigning from their posts because they were not satisfied with the progress of President Gayoom’s reform agenda.
• They were also resigning to protest against President’s intention of seeking a new term of office.
• Many of the bills to be implemented under the reform agenda are stuck and the President does not seem to be giving these bills top priority to clear the bills.
• In some cases the government refused to submit the bills that he ( Saeed) drafted and that he had to seek the help of an opposition MP to propose the bills to the People’s Majlis.
• The time line set for the reform agenda road map has not been adhered to and therefore the reform Agenda 2004 is a failure.
• They said that when the President was implementing the reform agenda it was not appropriate that he announces his intention to run for another term.
• There were some personal allegations that the President was trying to award resorts to certain individuals.
• Government has failed to implement with tough measures to prevent drug offences and street fights that have become common in the country.
• The Justice Minister said that the government has failed to take Maldives on a moderate Islamic path, pointing to the recent rise in extremism.
• More importantly the Justice Minister said that one of the reasons why he tendered his resignation was his frustration over President Gayoom’s efforts to promote and protect certain individuals and their interests. ( There were personal grievances then!)

Surprisingly the two ministers declared that they have not resigned from the ruling party DRP though they may have to, after defying the government and calling a press conference, a first of its kind in Maldives.

To conclude, it cannot be said that the referendum results will end once for all the acrimony between the two major parties of the country. It is for President Gayoom to prove that he is determined to follow up the reform agenda and complete it by November 30 this year and thus prepare the country for a truly democratic election under the new constitution by 2008.