Democracy deficit in Muizzu’s Maldives – Firstpost

For many in the Maldivian capital, Male, President Mohamed Muizzu’s Commonwealth Day declaration ‘reaffirming continued commitment to democracy and human rights’ was a laughing matter – and at the same time, a very serious issue, too.

The ruling Progressive National Congress (PNC), with a brutal majority in the 93-member Parliament, had passed a hurried law to downsize the Supreme Court’s bench strength from seven to five, and the ‘independent’ (?) Judicial Services Commission (JSC) suspended three of seven, less than an hour before the full court was to resume adjourned hearing on the equally controversial anti-defection law, passed last November.

There is some hope left for democracy in the country after President Muizzu returned the downsizing bill back to Parliament for ‘reconsideration’. In this, he was reportedly influenced by Attorney-General Ahmed Usham’s post facto legal advice in the matter and also by the seeming lack of enthusiasm among his own supporters.

It’s anybody’s guess why the President had not consulted the Attorney-General, who is a member of the Cabinet like in the US and elsewhere, before clearing any proposal for a ruling party member to pilot the downsizing bill in Parliament.

Some social media activists have since claimed that the president is not getting the right kind of inputs and advice on multiple matters, political, economic and now constitutional. They are not so sure about the inputs on defence and security matters, either, all of which have a longer purpose and shelf life than a presidential term.

Also, many PNC parliamentarians had contested the spirit, content and timing of the downsizing bill in their group meeting first, reflecting the public mood. This was followed by ten ruling party MPs boycotting the first reading of the bill in Parliament. At the final vote, which too was passed without adequate debate, as has been the wont, only one of the ten stayed away, swearing by the Constitution and the people.

An anti-India legislator, Ahmed Azaan, was promptly replaced by Mohamed Ismail on Parliament’s all-important ‘241 National Security Committee’. The latter immediately sought the dismissal of two police officers investigating the rioting at the Indian High Commission’s ‘Yoga Day’ event in 2022, in which he was the main ‘terror-accused’.

Brutal majority

Muizzu had spent his first year in office, focusing on economic recovery even while dabbling in foreign policy, overly identifying with China and avoidably targeting the Indian neighbour. The India relationship had improved by the commencement of the second year in November 2024, though there was no level playing field then and since. The economy had stabilised, though a lot more needed to be done for anything close to a recovery, full or not.

During this time the president began focusing on domestic politics and also started with the anti-defection law. The MDP Opposition called it anti-democratic and has been launching night protests, which were brutally attacked by the police, recently. The Human Rights Commission has since called upon the authorities to allow ‘peaceful assembly’, and the chances are that Muizzu would recast the HRCM as with other ‘independent institutions’, including the JSC, where his writ did not freely run.

On his directive for Parliament to reconsider the downsizing bill, critics of Muizzu do not credit him with belated altruism. Instead, it is seen as a better strategy aimed at ‘packing’ the original Seven-Judge Bench with a favourable majority, whose purpose would go beyond the disposal of the anti-defection law.

Incidentally, the JSC has extended the deadline for applications to fill the vacancy caused by one of the three suspended SC judges, owing to poor response. With only one application received, it seemed as if the Bar Council’s criticism of the downsizing bill had a salutary effect.

Legacy issue

Democracy in the Maldives suffers from historic, structural deficiencies, and hence, it is a legacy issue. An isolated nation and insulated people chose ‘Western democracy’ after living under a one-man rule for over a thousand years, first by Hindu and Buddhist kings and then by an Islamic sultan since the 12th century; Maldivians pride themselves on being the only South Asian nation not to have come under the colonial yoke.

A protectorate of the UK, based out of the ocean neighbour Sri Lanka, until independence in 1965, the nation had not tasted ‘modern democracy’ until political protests for ‘regime change’ culminated in the 2008 Constitution. It is still debatable if the charismatic pro-democracy leader Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed used the West or if the reverse was the truth, but ordinary Maldivians were ill-prepared for the systems change that multi-party democracy ushered in.

In the century gone by, Maldives had experimented with an ‘Islamic Republic’ as early as 1932 but reverted to the sultanate not long after – and yet had an ‘elected’ sultan in the early fifties. This was followed by 50 long years of one-man rule of the ‘guided democracy’ kind, by just two leaders. Prime Minister-turned-President Ibrahim Nasir and his usurper-successor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom were ‘benevolent autocrats’, who laid strong foundations for the mainstay tourism economy, communication and connectivity, and healthcare and modern education devoid of madrasa influence.

In their kind of ‘democracy’ (!), Parliament, under law, either chose a single candidate for the presidential poll or had to clear all candidates beforehand. In both cases, the incumbents did not acknowledge that their people had grown with the times, thanks to the education and exposure they got, but they alone remained in the past.

Preaching and practice

This inability of Gayoom, who ruled for 30 long years, beginning 1978, was at the core of the pro-democracy movement’s success. But Maldives and Maldivians forgot that for any system to change to work, the leaders manning the system too had to change. Once again, that did not happen.

Nasheed, who replaced Gayoom in a hotly fought multi-party presidential poll in 2008, too, did not know that his charisma had its own outer boundary and that there was a lot of difference between preaching and practice. Much of the present-day Maldives’ democracy deficiencies might not have happened had Nasheed, as the torchbearer, done things differently, without seeking to convince the nation and the world that ‘transitional democracy’ required all of it and more.

Thus, Nasheed also set the tone for democracy deficiency when he set the precedent for the president ‘returning’ a bill passed by the opposition-controlled parliament and used the interregnum to sign the controversial construction-cum-concession agreement with Indian infra major, GMR Group. The bill sought to restrain the executive from signing outlandish agreements of the kind with foreign entities, citing ‘national security’, which too was at best a calculated political mischief of the Nasheed kind.

The president then added insult to injury when he cleared the bill, as mandated, when Parliament passed it a second time. The damage to the nation’s toddler democracy had been done, and Nasheed’s successors have only been building upon that flawed edifice, as it suited them, too.

Glaring, deafening

Every fault line in the nation’s multi-party democracy scheme can be traced back to the Nasheed era, which was short-lived after he tried to outsmart political adversaries by quitting office for a second time in four years, calling this one a coup, in February 2012. A Commonwealth probe refused to attest to his coup theory. The nation that had witnessed coup bids during Gayoom’s time, including the famous ‘Operation Cactus’, involving Indian military rescuers, in 1988 – had no patience for Nasheed.

Thus, Muizzu’s attempt to influence/pack the Supreme Court too has had its precedent in Nasheed, who went to the extent of shutting down the seat of the nation’s highest judiciary for a day to have his way with the composition of the Bench. Beginning Nasheed, every elected president, including estranged party colleague Ibrahim ‘Ibu’ Solih (2018-23) and common political rival Abdulla Yameen (2013-18), had changed the bench’s composition to their liking.

Solih did it differently when he increased the bench strength from five to seven. In his time, the highly politicised JSC created history by suspending a trial judge hours before he was to deliver the verdict in a money-laundering case against predecessor Yameen. After a new, three-judge bench had found Yameen guilty and the High Court too had upheld the same, the Supreme Court struck down the same.

The Solih administration also manipulated two other money-laundering cases by having the High Court delay appeal hearings when sought by Yameen in one case and not commencing even the trial in another. Independent of the ‘unassailable’ documentary evidence against Yameen, the political manipulation was as glaring as it was deafening.

Yet, the worst is reserved for Yameen, who, as president, promulgated short-term-emergency twice in five years to overcome sticky moments. In the second instance, he used the emergency powers to arrest a SC judge and obtained a revised, favourable verdict.

The Supreme Court too did not cover itself with glory in the matter when it set free Nasheed, who used his ‘prison leave’ in the UK to obtain ‘political asylum’, without an open court hearing and through an unanimous order put out only on the court’s website. What’s more, with the ‘regime change’ after the 2018 elections, the Supreme Court reversed the Yameen era verdict and reinstated freedom for Nasheed and 20 other political prisoners – no questions asked.

Institutional hobby horse

From time to time, Nasheed and the MDP – until at least he split to float the failed ‘Democrats’ Party ahead of the 2023 presidential election – used to toy with the idea of changing over to a ‘parliamentary democracy’, as in India and the UK. This, according to them, ensured greater power distribution between the executive and the legislature, but without any empirical evidence.

The fact remains that the then opposition-influenced Constitution of 2008 had in-built provisions for a parliamentary democracy. However, after the nation voted for the continuance of the presidential form in a referendum, the Opposition did not have enough time, energy or will to recast the draft with new elements of checks and balances of the American kind, which, however, owed to a political culture of two-plus centuries and not to any legislative measure, as believed.

Given that Muizzu has now begun riding the institutional hobby horse of ‘unfettered presidential powers’, feeble voices could then rise about the wisdom of revisiting the Constitution, whether to introduce checks and balances, or to convert to a parliamentary democracy, or an admixture of both, as in France or elsewhere. All of it will remain an incomplete debate with inconclusive findings in the absence of a substantive national discourse.

After all, constitutions are ordinarily made and unmade by brutal parliamentary majorities, which all but Nasheed have had in their time. Reasoning goes out when the majority dictates concepts, processes and procedures. Yes, a system change might still require a national referendum, but a president who wins his own election and that of a new Parliament in its time can hope to clear the halfway mark in a referendum, if held without much delay.

After one-and-a-half-decade exposure to ‘functional democracy’ (?), however incomplete it be, ordinary Maldivians too have got used to the idea of the power in their hands and how they can elect and reject their ruler every five years and thus create a new system of checks and balances. Suffice to point out that no president since Nasheed has won the second mandatory upper limit of a second term, though like him, Yameen and Solih also sought re-election.

Yet, from a distance, US President Donald Trump in his current second term now might have put new ideas into the minds of counterparts and aspirants in countries as far away as the Maldives. Trump’s ‘rule by fiats’ caught the international media’s eyes more than those of his predecessors, and that may be saying a lot!

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.