Is a reunified MDP a threat to President Muizzu’s second-term ambitions? – Firstpost

The fast-tracked
reunification of the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), the first pro-democracy electoral entity in the country, has opened both opportunities and challenges. The ‘opportunities’ flow from the previous presidential poll tally of 2023, when incumbent Ibrahim ‘Ibu’ Solih of the MDP lost his re-election bid by around
eight per cent vote-share. The margin was close to the votes polled by the candidate of the breakaway Democrats party, floated by Solih’s estranged friend and the nation’s first pro-democracy president, Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed.

The challenge is in the form of the re-unified party burying past differences down to the cadre level and also re-energising neutral/swing voters. The latter have made a difference to the outcome by choosing a new president every five years since the nation became a multi-party democracy in 2008. Their indifference showed in 2023, in the form of a relatively lower turnout compared to the 90-plus per cent in the past.

If critics are to be believed, closer to completing two years in office in November, incumbent President Mohamed Muizzu has used the constitutional process to
‘stifle democracy’, as his political mentor and former President Abdulla Yameen had allegedly attempted but failed in his
re-election bid in 2018. The hurried passage of an
anti-defection law even when his ruling People’s National Congress (PNC) held a
‘super majority’ in the 93-member Parliament, or the People’s Majlis, coupled with the last-minute
suspension of three of the seven Justices of the Supreme Court hearing a constitutional challenge to the law, forcing the
resignation of one of them and the subsequent
sacking of the other two without a fair hearing, are cited as examples to Muizzu’s anti-democracy acts.

In part, the name of the game is ‘packing’ the higher judiciary with ‘pliable judges’, and no president before incumbent Muizzu can escape the charge. But they did not initiate an anti-defection law, which did face initial reservations, however limited, from within the ruling PNC, too. Incidentally, this is the second such law in the past decade, Parliament having repealed the earlier one passed during the Yameen presidency—after he lost his re-election bid in 2018.

Democracy issues, thus, coupled with the
economic crisis that is said to be engulfing the nation and the government, are the planks on which the MDP now hopes to hit the track for the next presidential outing that is still three years down the line, in 2028. In different ways, the long wait is also a problem for the re-unified MDP as much as it is for the government and the Muizzu leadership.

Already, former President Solih, who is yet to declare his intent on contesting the party primaries for the next presidential poll, has called for the MDP to
prioritise the nationwide island council elections, (due) next March/April, over the presidential poll. Independent of the complex interpretation of the outcomes as in the past, the island council polls will still be seen as a midterm referendum on the Muizzu presidency. It will also test the acceptance level of MDP reunification and also Nasheed’s famed charisma that failed him the last time round.

Internal issue

An internal issue may be brewing for the MDP in the form of party chairman Fayyaz Ismail’s announcement that they intended abolishing the post of party president—or
merge both—at the party’s national congress in August. Solih’s foreign minister and veteran diplomat, Abdulla Shahid, the only Maldivian to be elected president of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), is at present the party president nominated by predecessor Solih—without any formal election.

Of greater interest is Fayyaz Ismail’s announcement that no party official should hold an elected or nominated position in the government, including the presidency, ministerial office, or Parliament membership. Both prior to the advent of democracy in 2008 and afterwards, every person elected president has held the headship of the ruling party—with no space for dissent and internal democracy, either in the government or in the ruling organisation.

The problem became acute when, during the Solih presidency, Nasheed continued as the MDP chief and also became Parliament Speaker until he quit to form the Democrats party. Both Solih and Shahid have reserved their comments on the proposed amendments to the party constitution even though they joined Fayyaz Ismail in welcoming reunification and also Nasheed back to the fold.

Definitely, Nasheed’s return home from his overseas job, heading an international climate group, has re-energised party politics in the country. By the same token, it has also brought out the simmering differences within the MDP more than since the party lost power in 2023.

For instance, Solih’s first major rally in two years, in northern Kulhudhuffushi recently, was a solo performance. Neither party chairman Fayyaz nor president Shahid was present.

Both, incidentally, were Solih’s blue-eyed boys when he was president. In fact, after Solih’s defeat in 2023, open accusations were hurled at Fayyaz from within the party for messing up both organisational affairs and as minister for economic development.

The MDP cadre expectation is that it is for Muizzu to lose owing to perceptions of his becoming unpopular already. Hence, whoever the MDP selects as its presidential candidate will (have to) win, no matter his charisma and capabilities.

For now, the hopes are that all four factions would work together once the party elects a presidential candidate through the primaries in early 2028. However, there are apprehensions that the three or four factions, including that of Nasheed, may run a deep divide down the line during primaries for the selection of nominees for the island councils across the country.

The question is if the faction leaders would patch up their differences for the time and postpone it until after the local council primaries and elections and have consensus candidates of some kind for those positions. This alone, it is said, can ensure a decent result for the MDP in the local council elections—where the ruling party, according to precedents, has held an inherent advantage.

Incidentally, Solih’s first major rally in two years, at northern Kulhudhuffushi, had to be indefinitely postponed following heavy rains. The rains and high winds also disrupted leaders and cadres travelling from the capital, Male. Fayyaz and Shahid were said to be on the list of travellers to the northern island.

Advantage Muizzu, but…

Unless otherwise proved and unless the divided Opposition is able to make out a very strong, multi-pronged case against the incumbent leadership, it may still be ‘Advantage Muizzu’, at least in the island council elections. He will then have to reaffirm his desire to seek re-election.

For the MDP, it is not just about unity within the merged party. It also involves their ability to work with other, smaller/weaker political outfits with a certain electoral reach. It’s an occasion also for Nasheed, personally, to try and regain his faded charisma.

In focus is the traditional 40-plus per cent ‘conservative vote bank’ that Muizzu inherited without effort from Yameen after the
Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission’s decision to reject the latter’s presidential nomination in 2023, citing a pending court-ordered conviction and sentence. As the 2018 results showed, despite the perceived anti-incumbency flowing from his five years in office, Yameen still retained almost all of that vote-bank despite losing his reelection bid. Solih, as the common Opposition candidate, has remained the only one thus far to win the presidency in the first round in what essentially is a two-phase poll otherwise.

Those ‘conservative votes’ constituted the 2008 losing figure of half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the controversial president for 30 long years, which he could effortlessly transfer to Yameen in Elections-2013, thus contributing to the latter’s victory over Nasheed for the MDP. Gayoom lost the vote bank, which comprised socio-economic beneficiaries of his presidency and also religious conservatives as different from fundamentalists, after he shook hands with the MDP in the 2018 elections. That followed Gayoom’s irreconcilable estrangement with Yameen, who also ordered his arrest and also those of two Supreme Court Justices, for allegedly plotting to overthrow him.

There is nothing yet to show that much, if not all of that ‘inherited vote-bank’ of Muizzu has deserted him or is likely to desert him, be it in the island council polls or later in the presidential election, or both. Going by Gayoom’s 2018 experience, any suggestion that Yameen loyalists still on Muizzu’s side cross-vote for an MDP candidate, for instance, can be counter-productive.

The incumbent, however, may face vote depletion if a powerful candidate from Yameen’s new outfit, the People’s National Front (PNF), or a strong rival from within Muizzu’s PNP, or both, are able to slice away votes from Muizzu without possibly being able to win the presidential poll. That is pending Yameen’s two court cases originating in his presidential years, on which final judicial outcomes are not ordinarily expected before nomination time for the next presidential poll, too—as was the case the last time round.

In the final analysis, the coming months and years will hopefully witness a revival of Maldivian street interest in politics and elections that is still patently lacking—also owing to the economic downturn that in turn has hit every individual and household. Not very long ago, opposition rallies, as the pre-unification MDP’s daily ‘pro-democracy protests’ in the capital, Male, failed miserably after a good start.

In the multi-party democracy that Maldives has been since 2008, the youth constitute the single largest electoral constituency. Unlike the Muizzu presidency, earlier governments at least attempted to match youth aspirations and employability, including willingness to accept jobs on offer in the mainstay tourism sector, which otherwise attracts foreigners, leading to avoidable shortages of scarce forex, too.

Indian consistency

A section of the media in the two countries has since reported that Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi will be visiting the country this year and will be the chief guest at Maldivian Independence Day, falling on 26 August. Certainly, it will mark a very welcome departure for both countries, and more especially for the Maldivian people and businesses after President Muizzu revised and recalibrated his
‘India Out’ poll campaign after taking certain unimaginative decisions and indefensible declarations in his early months in the office.

India has always reiterated its consistent and considered position that it would work with the government that Maldivians elect and that New Delhi’s help, assistance, and cooperation are addressed to the Maldivian people (through the agency of an elected government). Hence, there is less likelihood of Modi’s visit, when it comes through, influencing domestic politics one way or the other, as some in Maldives may have concluded, imagined, or felt anxious about.

In between, Maldivians, especially incumbent Muizzu, had to decide if they wanted to go ahead with his forgotten proposals for
presidential poll reforms, which also included simultaneous elections to the presidency and Parliament, if only to deflect the nation’s attention away from economic issues. MDP’s Nasheed, for his part, and the party as a whole will have to decide if they still have the stomach for a
parliamentary form of government with a figurehead president. It was over this issue that Nasheed had snapped ties with the parent party and Solih.

Yet, at the end of the day, the question is if the reunited MDP is a threat to Muizzu’s dream run for a second term. The answer is far away, as has always been the case with Maldivian presidential polls since democratisation in 2008—but the question has been thrown in far too early, with speculation running riot between now and the polling day.

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.