Political plots threaten to bring down Maldives government

At 5pm local time on Tuesday, the entire Maldives cabinet resigned. Hours later, the police issued arrest warrants for former President Gayoom's half brother, Abdulla Yameen, and his billionaire protégé, Gasim Ibrahim. They face charges of bribery and corruption and are suspected by police of 'attempting to topple the government illegally.'

It looks unlikely there was any 1988-style attempted coup, complete with mercenary foreign forces poised to storm the capital Malé and seize the President's Palace. That was a disaster which led to deaths, failure, arrests and exile.

Instead, the allegations point to a plot to cripple the minority government of President Mohamed 'Anni' Nasheed by paying off Maldivian MPs to obstruct privatisation projects. 'The opposition MPs are operating a scorched earth policy, trying to stop the government from doing any work to help the people', says Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed.

Sources close the government say the motive is to block a deal to contract management of Male' International Airport to an outside consortium led by GMR. The plans threaten local tycoons' business interests providing services to Maldives Airports.

Usual suspects

Police are still investigating while Abdulla Yameen and Gasim Ibrahim are held under house arrest. They are two of the Maldives most colourful characters. Their web of influence and wealth reaches far and wide. They have been on the scene for decades and are now both leaders of opposition parties, the People's Alliance and Jumhooree respectively.

Yameen is the half-brother of former President Gayoom. He held many portfolios during Gayoom's 30-year rule, including Home Minister. He was renowned for his hard-man image and his readiness to crush political opposition using the paramilitary 'Star Force'.

His aspirations to be the top man in the Maldives are also well-known, and during the period of transition from Gayoom's regime to the next, he was jostling for position and power.

Gasim's is a rags-to-riches tale. It begins with him working as a house boy for Gayoom's wife's family. From there, he is spotted by Gayoom and in time given the tools to make himself a rich man. He founded the Villa company, which provided gas, diesel and other imported products. He was also given resorts to run when the Maldives first tried out tourism in the 1970s and ‘80s. Both those businesses boomed.

He rose to become Finance Minister under Gayoom, a role that was created especially for him, despite a lack of qualifications. Today, Villa has a huge portfolio of companies, providing everything from resorts to schools.

It was, in fact, Gasim's money which helped form the opposition group now known as the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). When Gayoom found out the man whom he had made had betrayed him, he threw him in jail. An eyewitness who shared the cells with him tells me that for the week he was behind bars, Gasim was a wreck. Unable to cope with prison, he broke down and gave up his aspirations to rule. He was released and never again betrayed his boss.

Dilemmas

But if these two are both now found guilty, the question is: what will President Nasheed do with them? And what will he do about his lame-duck minority government?

'Anni' himself spent years in prison under Gayoom's rule, at least one of those in solitary confinement. He rose to power at the helm of an opposition movement which deplored the repression of Gayoom's government and the human rights abuses it committed. He assembled a party of former political prisoners and ran in the 2008 elections on a platform of democratisation.

If he now begins banging up his political opponents, his image as South Asia's democratic golden boy will be tarnished. But if they are proven to have carried out this plot, and he doesn't punish them, they may well bring down his government.

This is a dilemma Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is familiar with. Many times during his rule he faced a situation where close allies and rivals tried to rise up against him. He knew he had to slap them back down but not keep them down, especially in a small country like the Maldives. So he kept many of his rivals close.

For Anni, it's not quite that straightforward. Gayoom didn't have to worry about his image as a democrat, because he didn't have one. Anni does. And he also has to contend with the fact his government is without a cabinet and without a way of cooperating with parliament. What can he do?

Gayoom's former information minister, now an independent MP also called Mohamed Nasheed, has told Minivan News: “I have also heard from a highly reliable source that the president has been considering a cabinet reshuffle and will use this opportunity to appoint new ministers, and remove non-MDP cabinet ministers in the new arrangement. That, and threats and intimidation.”

But will it work? Or has Anni's power base been undermined too much already? He may simply have to resign and hand government to the DRP and PA alliance, declaring himself the victim of a plot he was powerless to stop, and one that was masterminded and carried out by MPs within the next government.

Or he may be able to trigger another round of elections, hoping he can secure a new mandate. That will be hard to do, though, with a majority ready to form a government. And even if he can call elections, he faces an electorate that never gave him a majority in the first place, even when the reformist mood was at its height.

Besides those two options, all he could do is make an audacious swoop for power by rushing these charges through court, finding Gasim and Yamin guilty, jailing them and weeding out all the complicit MPs. But that is the approach of his predecessor, not of an enlightened democrat.

Resign or repress. That is his choice.