Comment: Institution building in the Maldives

During his three years in office, cut short from the mandated five following his sudden resignation on February 7, and later, too, he has laid a great stress on the need for reforming the Judiciary, Election Commission, Human Rights Commission and also the legislative aspect of the People’s Majlis or Parliament.

His detractors, now in power, are using the same arguments of his to try and deny him the early presidential polls that Nasheed and his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) have been demanding since his resignation. President Waheed Hassan and his multi-party coalition Government say that they needed to ’empower’, not ‘reform’ independent institutions, and enact laws to check against ‘Executive interference’ as happened under the Nasheed regime.

The MDP has never hidden its reservations about working with judges and members of independent commissions, once appointed by then entrenched President Maumoon Gayoom. It wanted them removed, and critics say that the party and the Nasheed government ‘invented’ reasons to paint the entire lot of government employees black. Critics also say that the MDP perception was based on the anti-Gayoom mood of the nation’s people and voters when Nasheed won the presidential polls, again as a part of an informal coalition ahead of the second, run-off round in October 2008. The party refused to acknowledge that three years down the line and less than two years to presidential polls, Nasheed, not Gayoom, would be the electoral issue and sought to keep the electoral focus still on the latter.