Maldives: Yameen ready for talks, international mediators
N. Sathiya Moorthy
The last time, it was the visits of Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, and those by two Sri Lankan Ministers and one from the UK that ‘did the trick’. Jailed former Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed obtained a month-long ‘medical leave’ for urgent spinal surgery in London. This time after separate and near-coinciding visits by a delegation from the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) and the European Union (EU), President Abdulla Yameen has offered to re-start multi-party political negotiations, that too with international mediation.
“President Yameen has decided to re-launch the political party talks. Invitations for parties will be sent out by President’s Office,” a tweet by the Foreign Ministry said. Not long after on Thursday, Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon told CNN that her government had invited international bodies such as the UN, Commonwealth and the EU to mediate the talks. Yameen decided on the talks to find ways for overcoming the challenges to the fledgling democracy, she said. “It also shows the President’s priority of strengthening the judiciary,” she added.
The Yameen leadership would want to believe that his Government is not acting under international pressure. Alongside the announcement about restarting the talks, Minister Dunya, Attorney-General, Mohammed Anil and Fisheries Minister Mohamed Shainee are now in London, meeting with top British diplomats, Commonwealth chief and officials and media groups. The visit was not known to be on cards. However, given that AG Anil is on the team could also imply that the Yameen leadership is also seeking to impress upon the international community, the legality involved in the Nasheed-Judge Abdulla cases, and the lack of constitutionality in the demands for Nasheed’s freedom.
Nasheed and his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had called upon Yameen to commence political negotiations, even before the former was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison in the ‘Judge Abdualla abduction case’. He has repeated the demand since flying to the UK for medical treatment. So has the international national community, including a recent report of a UN affiliate, the CMAG and EU teams, more recently.
Yet, to conclude that Yameen’s initiatives of the kind are exclusively under international pressure as a majority section of the global and domestic media has concluded, need not be entirely correct. Nasheed, the MDP openly and overtly supportive sections of the international community have tagged on their demands for reviving the all-party talks with freedom for ‘all political prisoners’ in the country. Needless to say, the count starts from Nasheed himself.
This could mean delays, if the MDP insists that Nasheed, who is a prisoner still, should be their delegate or lead their delegation. The EU delegation in particular has pressed this point at and after meetings with Yameen and Dunya. However, during Nasheed’s imprisonment, the party and the leader did nominate two different delegations to negotiate with Home Minister Umar Naseer after Yameen insisted that the Government was ready to negotiate with the party, but not a ‘prisoner’.
Pre-supposed and more…
The West has reiterated that without a political solution (read: Nasheed’s ‘electoral freedom’), the 2018 presidential polls cannot be ‘free and fair’. The argument had produced results ahead of the 2013 presidential polls, when Nasheed was already facing trial in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’. At the time, he skipped court hearings more than once. On the last occasion, he took a unilateral decision to stage a sit-in, in the Indian High Commission at Male.
Apart from other issues and concerns, the MDP’s open demands and those of the party’s western supporters – whether nations or institutions – seem to have pre-supposed that the Maldivian Judiciary is under Executive care, and the President could just ask, direct or dictate freedom for Nasheed and other political prisoners without going through due processes. The Government seemed inclined to prove otherwise. Even while admitting to institutional weaknesses, particularly in the Judiciary, the Yameen leadership seems keen to ensure that existing processes are gone through, if only to convince the world that they have always been on the right.
For absolute freedom, Nasheed would either have to obtain a favourable order from the Supreme Court, where his appeal is pending (alongside an earlier one in his favour by the State). That alone would make him eligible to contest the presidential polls of 2018. The double-quick alternative for obtaining freedom would be for Nasheed to seek presidential pardon, and for Yameen to grant it. Existing laws would disqualify Nasheed from contesting the 2018 polls, however.
The alternative would be for the nation’s Parliament to amend the Constitution and electoral laws, to provide for one-time, one-man exception, or amend the existing provisions for term-served prisoners to contest polls. President Yameen’s ruling combine has close to a two-thirds majority required for any amendment. Yet, Government parties could argue that it involves larger questions of democracy issues, and would be a fit subject for all-party talks and not a quick-fire constitutional amendment.
Torpedoed talks
Political negotiations have had a chequered career in democratised Maldives, post-2008. The all-party talks with former chairman of the Maldives Human Rights Commission, Ahmed Mujthaba as Convenor/Moderator, did not really take off. One meeting or the other, one party or the other, to the all-party talks had ensured that the negotiations did not really proceed to any way close to a possible conclusion.
Likewise, the then Indian Foreign Secretary, Ranjan Mathai’s initiative for political reconciliation through an all-party round-table during his brief visit in the weeks after Nasheed’s exit was torpedoed, by using the very process. The Mujthabha-led all-party negotiations were not revived in any earnestness or seriousness until the presidential polls of 2013. The past attempts of the ‘international community’ in the matter were equally less productive, or counter-productive.
Even while backing the MDP’s demands for an international inquiry into Nasheed’s exit as President on 6 February 2012, a Commonwealth probe report went against it. The MDP would not accept the findings whole-heartedly. In the process, the international community’s focus also shifted from its initial demands to the probe-findings. The MDP ended up concluding that the international community was sympathetic to and supportive of anti-Nasheed, ‘anti-democratic’ forces in the country.
Issues for talks
The larger question in terms of political negotiations could well relate to the issues that the all-party talks should agitate, and also the differing positions and perceptions that individual parties may put forth. There is nothing to suggest just now that even the MDP, as the largest political party, could put forth specific demands, other than freedom for Nasheed, the nation’s most charismatic and popular leader.
This apart, any serious negotiations that (were to) go beyond ‘freedom for all political prisoners’ could also flounder over the differing positions that individual political parties might take, from the very concepts on. It’s where the Mujthabha talks lost steam – or, was deliberately made to lose steam and relevance. The question could thus swing from issues for talks, to the talks as an issue in itself. It could get stuck there, too, if international negotiators, as and when summoned, did not go with a honourable withdrawal scheme at every turn – or, with an ‘exit plan’ in toto, if it came that.
If they do not handle it with care and caution, given their template notions about democracy and democratic institutions, and inadequate knowledge of Maldives, polity and society, international facilitators could harm the negotiations at times, than add value. They may have models that have worked in ‘matured’ democracies, not in Maldives. To make it work in contemporary Maldives, used to a thousand years of one-man rule since the days of the Sultanate, is what democratisation has failed to achieve, too.
The negotiations, whenever, however and wherever held – if some insist on some specifics and others all agree, too – could raise more questions than answers. Ranked opposite the Yameen dispensation and alongside him (Gasim’s JP, for instance) are political parties and civil society groups that had piloted the 2008 Constitution draft. Now, all sides would be called upon to revisit their old positions, and this could cause embarrassment to some, on specifics.
Any political settlement would look at various aspects of governance, government structure and social order. It should not surprise anyone if the MDP agitates for ‘independence of Judiciary’ and other government ‘institutions’, but without being able to tell the rest, how – or, convince them about it. Given the ‘Abdulla abduction case’ and the day-long closure of the Supreme Court when Nasheed was President, among others, any forceful arguments by the MDP could end up becoming a slanging match, both inside the negotiations and outside.
Third coup-bid?
Around the visits by the EU and CMAG delegations came reports of what some social media circles might dub as a ‘third coup-bid’ against President Yameen. As coincidence would have it, Defence Minister Adam Shareef, the third one to occupy the office in about a year, declared at a function that the nation’s armed forces would stand by the ‘legally-elected’ government in the country.
This one involved a former Attorney-General reportedly obtaining a ‘fake arrest warrant’ against Yameen from a non-jurisdictional judge in a distant island, based on ‘forged documents’. The police, which was in the dark all through, arrested the two. The Judicial Services Commission (JSC) has since sacked the judge concerned but ‘international jurists organisations’ have called for his freedom from remand, ordered by the High Court.
In a way, this one was thus a ‘judicial coup-bid’ of some kind. The first one involved a ‘constitutional coup’ mooted by the MDP central council in December 2014, when it called for Yameen to hand over the presidency to Gasim Ibrahim, who was outside the mandated list. End-September 2015, Yameen escaped a blast on the presidential yacht when returning from the annual Haj pilgrimage. Then Vice-President Ahmed Adheeb was later arrested on the twin charge of assassination to kill Yameen, and also to get him impeached with the Opposition support in the People’s Majlis, or Parliament.
Incidentally, the ‘arrest warrant’ for Yameen reportedly flowed from allegations of large-scale embezzlement from a public sector corporation, until recently under the care of a close associate of impeached VP Adheeb, now in prison for the ‘assassination bid’ and on multiple graft-charges, as Tourism Minister. Citing alleged confessions of the key accused, the MDP has claimed that much of the $ 70-m diverted funds had ended with Yameen or other high government officials.
This is by far the most genuinely political issue/case that Yameen’s detractors have got to target him. Yameen has since denied involvement in graft and promised stringent criminal action against the real culprits, based on the findings of Government auditors. As may be recalled, when Nasheed was President, an Indian news magazine had made out a $ 70-m embezzlement charge against Yameen, when he was Finance Minister under half-brother, President Gayoom. Though the Government promised action, nothing was either done, or came out of it.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)
Myanmar: Naming a new President
Mihir Bhonsale
Wide speculations have embroiled the nominations for the presidential candidate in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader, which swept the parliamentary polls, indisputably holds the key to the nomination of president, but is keeping the cards close to her chest.
One common speculation is that the NLD is considering the option of circumventing the constitutional provision that bars Suu Kyi from becoming President. If so, it’s a significant departure from Suu Kyi’s much-publicized statement following her party’s landslide victory, that in the NLD-led government in Myanmar, she would be ‘above the president’. She had called the government that she intends to form as the ‘National Reconciliation’ government, suggesting attempt at rapprochement with the military.
As to who will become the president will depend on the outcome of the behind the scene negotiations between the NLD and the military until March 17, which is the last day for nominating the president and vice presidents in the parliament.
Suspending Article 59(f)
Article 59(f) of the Constitution bars anyone whose spouse or children are foreign nationals from becoming the president or vice-president. The provision made by military rulers of the country in the 2008 constitution has remained the bone of contention, ever since the NLD’s participation in parliamentary politics, when they cornered 43 of the 44 seats they contested in the by-elections.
Now, the NLD is mulling over the option of moving a motion in favour of suspending the Article 59(f) that would allow their leader to become the president. Unlike the previous constitution, the 2008 constitution does not mention whether an article of the constitution can be suspended or not.
A constitutional amendment to the effect would require a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which the NLD lacks, owing to the electoral scheme freezing 25 percent seats in both Houses exclusively for military nominees. The local media has reported that hard bargaining is on between the NLD and the military for suspension of the constitutional provision 59(f).
Media is also abuzz with reports of an instruction to NLD MPs by the party high command to brace up for a session of parliament for clearing the constitutional hurdle for Suu Kyi to become president. Suu Kyi and the NLD are said to have kept their options open.
Much purpose
With the nominations of speakers and deputy in upper and lower houses of parliament complete, bearing a mix of NLD and non-NLD MPs including a former military genera,l Suu Kyi has displayed much purpose to the term ‘National Reconciliation’ that she calls the government her party is going to form.
Among the speaker’s also included an ethnic Karen, a Kachin and an Arakanese. The move of nominating ex lower-house speaker and former Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) chair Thura U Shwe Mann, a close ally of Suu Kyi to a legal affairs commission shows that she would leave no stone unturned in getting the constitutional provision suspended. Thura U Shwe Mann was in favour of repealing the Article 59(f).
Successful rapprochement between the military and government elect is required for any constitutional provision to be suspended the military and Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) seems to be not interested in giving this concession to the NLD. Commander-in-Chief of the Defence forces, Min Aung Hlaing, has remained tightlipped over the nominations for the executive post. But, he seems unlikely to be in favour of suspending the 59(f). The NLD is considering, appointing military MP’s to key government posts and as chief ministers of states, and expect in return that the military bloc will favour suspension of 59(f).
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