Following the controversial resignation of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed in early February, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group called in March for early elections as a way out of the political impasse in the country. Former Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Donald McKinnon was despatched as a special envoy to Malé, where he urged all sides to demonstrate maximum restraint.
Nasheed has claimed that his resignation and replacement by his deputy, Mohamed Waheed Hassan, was the outcome of a coup by supporters of former president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. “Rogue elements in the police and military joined together to… force my resignation with threats of bloodshed,” he said later. “I and many of my fellow democrats were beaten and imprisoned, and the young democracy we have worked so hard to nurture has been left in mortal danger.” Nasheed’s fragile coalition government had for some time been faced with sustained protests by allies of Gayoom and religious hardliners, who accused the Nasheed government of acting unconstitutionally and selling the country to Jewish, Christian and other foreign interests.
Nasheed’s supporters claim Gayoom was inciting unrest in order to reclaim power after his overwhelming defeat in the country’s first multi-party polls in 2008. Under the former president’s 30-year rule, political parties were banned and opponents, including Nasheed, were jailed, beaten and tortured; some even murdered.
Nasheed won international acclaim for his highly publicised moves to put the threat to the Maldives from climate change at centre stage, but disillusionment set in among the population, who saw no improvement in living standards. Attempts to reform key institutions, such as the judiciary, were obstructed and when Nasheed ordered the military to arrest a judge found guilty of misconduct by the Judicial Services Commission, his opponents pounced on the arrest as evidence of Nasheed’s flouting of the constitution.
