Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is the Maldives’ seventh president [Mohamed Sharuhaan/ Al Jazeera]
N Sathiya Moorthy 17 October 2019
Weeks after winning the presidential polls of 23 September 2018 and only weeks before the completion of one year in office, the Ibrahim ‘Ibu’ Solih Government in Maldives seems to be getting increasingly distracted by less important decisions. Like the maiden ‘democracy’ administration of MDP party boss, President Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, now Parliament Speaker, the incumbent too cannot afford to forget that the ‘honeymoon with the voter’ has a short shelf-life, which was already coming under stress ahead of the nation-wide island and atoll council polls, due next year but are being sought to be delayed by two years.
The immediate issue on hand is the Government’s decision to dust up an old report of the ‘Maldivian Democracy Network’ (MDN), which is among the leading NGOs in the country, and direct work-stoppage for being ‘anti-Islam’. The Solih administration has cited parliamentarians’ complaints over the 2015 report, but seems to have failed to ask why no one took it up with the administration of then President Abdulla Yameen, whom some party leaders loved to dub as ‘pro-radical’.
The action against MDN followed a police complaint by the Islamic Affairs Ministry for a probe into the MDN’s ‘Preliminary Assessment of Radicalisation in Maldives’. According to the Maldives Independent, the report had taken exception to passages in school text-books, which sought to spread the Islamic belief that Prophet Mohammad had travelled to Heaven and returned to earth in a single night.
As the MDN report of 2015 said, “In an attempt to claim that this story is not merely a fable, the book claims that the tale would stand true ‘even if subjected to contemporary scientific analysis,’ which is a highly questionable statement and does not entail such proof.” As some rights groups point out, if there was any hidden criticism in the MDN report, it was not about Islam, but about the ‘radicalisation process’ under the Yameen leadership, which President Solih’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had continually criticised.
Rights organisations that had hailed the Government decision on the empowered Presidential Commission on journalist Rilwan’s disappearance, which also highlighted the presence of Al-Qaeda and IS affiliates in the country, have taken exception to what now looks like a Government about-turn on ‘radicalisation’ issues. As they have pointed out, the action came about despite an MDN apology and the NGO promptly removing the contested passages from its website.
For a Government that came to power on the near-exclusive strength of its ‘democracy credentials’, rights groups are miffed at the absence of fair-play in the current dealings with the NGO. At the Government’s ban-announcement, MDN officials said that they had not been informed about the decision beforehand. There is also nothing to show that they were given an opportunity to be heard, though they too could not have contested what had appeared in their official website.
In this context, rights groups refer to Section 27 of the ‘democracy’ Constitution of 2008, which reads thus: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and the expression freedom to communicate opinions and expression in a manner that is not contrary to any tenet of Islam.” The operational portion, going by the current governmental interpretation, critics say, is not ‘freedom of thought’ but ‘any tenet of Islam’.
‘Packed’ judiciary
Whether such contestation, if any, could be resolved by the Maldivian Supreme Court. This, if approached, is also an attendant concern of some sections in the civil society, which has consistently and repeatedly backed the MDP, since before the party’s formal inception and registration with the nation’s Election Commission under the 2008 Constitution. In context, they also refer to the recent controversies that the Government had subjected the Supreme Court to, starting with demands for wholesale changes in the seven-member Bench of the nation’s highest judicial body.
As is known, Speaker Nasheed, who is also the most charismatic political and non-political personality across the country, set the ball rolling, by seeking relief from the politically-empowered Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the constitutionally-mandated watch-dog since 2008, blaming then Supreme Court Justice Abdulla Didi for his own legal and judicial travails in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’, when he was the President (2008-12).
Leave aside the out-of-turn elevations that came the way of trial Judge Didi under the Yameen dispensation, Nasheed also claimed that a million dollars were deposited in the former’s bank account in Malaysia, where the Judge’s wife was the nation’s deputy ambassador. After an ACC and parliamentary panel probe that was as fast-tracked and ‘focussed’ as the Nasheed trial and appeals were in their time, 72 members present voted unanimously to ‘dismiss’ the controversial Judge, over-ruling the court’s full-Bench stay of the proceedings in other fora, as of little or no constitutional consequence.
Along with ‘freedom of speech’, the MDP since inception, first as an idea and later as a registered electoral entity, has always held ‘judicial freedom’ and ‘executive accountability’ as among the multiple pillars for a vibrant democracy. Opinion however has been divided within the party on the issue of ‘freedom of religion’, almost from the beginning. Though no clear dividing lines appeared in public demand for governmental action against ‘religious radicalisation’, especially in matters such as the ‘Rilwan murder probe’, in some cases as this one, there possibly was a ‘hidden’ though long-term agenda, as well.
Though ‘judicial freedom’ has been among the democracy principles that the MDP has been propagating since inception, both as a political ideology and also an electoral entity, but when it comes to practice, the party if in power, has behaved exactly the ways its adversaries have been, when in office. Few years ago after Nasheed came to power, defeating President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom the MDP Government led by him also sought to pack the Supreme Court Bench with men of its own choice, whose judicial propriety and non-partisanship were also questiobable.
It is in this background, that the Solih Government’s continuous targeting of its judiciary has become visible. If earlier the Government had unilaterally decided to commission a South African judge to help ‘reform’ the Maldivian Judiciary without consulting the nation’s Supreme Court, now it has once again decided to probe 17 specific instances of what it calls ‘judicial over-reach’, that too by politically-appointed ACC members.
Term extension?
It is in this context that the Government’s decided to extend the term of the island and atoll councils, for which nation-wide elections are otherwise due next year. Obviously at the insistence of the Government leadership, the Attorney-General’s office has reportedly shared with the President’s Office constitutional and other legal amendment drafts, for presenting to the Parliament. While the practical need to extend the local councils’ terms from the current three to five years makes sense, the MDP itself had sought and obtained a three-year term, from the Constitution Assembly, or Special Majlis, in 2008.
With 65 of the 87 parliamentary seats in its kitty, the ruling party has the required two-thirds majority to pass the constitutional amendment. But central to the public debate in the matter would be the MDP’s inability to cross the decisive 50-per cent vote-share in the 6 April parliamentary polls, which could translate into an ‘anti-MDP mandate’, if the divided Opposition were to come together. However, that could only be one such element, the other being the possibility of the constitutional amendment being contested in the Supreme Court, which may have come to be seen as ‘MDP-centric’ by then, by a substantial section of the ‘non-committed voters, who have voted the party this time as in 2008 presidential polls.
The immediate reference is only to the ‘MDN work-stoppage order’. However, as Ibrahim Thayyib said in a column in the Maldives Independent, “The worry here, obviously, is the facade of peace that the State is targeting for. The substance of peace, however, lies in addressing the root causes. If the State is sincere about enhancing social-cohesion and building resilience, the priority should be to facilitate discussion and dialogue. Rather than letting social issues fester, the State should accept the issues and the nature or root causes of such issues”.
The expectations from the MDP Government in general and the Solih leadership in particular, are much more than its predecessor Presidents and their political administration (s). It will be even more when the criminal courts and appeal courts finally dispose of the corruption cases against former President and his allies. Over-reaching and over-staying on the issue was also a cause that the Nasheed presidency waited out and came to regret all those ‘anti-Gayoom’ propaganda, though much earlier than the rulers were possibly prepared for.