Will Nasheed pull it off again in the run-off?

Otherwise, the Maldivian voter has given the expected verdict in the first round of polling on Saturday, 7 September. Despite hard-nosed campaigning by the four contenders, the voter has declared – for a second time in five years – that none in the race could win over their confidence and secure a mandate in the first round.

Given the contemporary nature of the nation’s politics, this time’s front-runner – and former president – Mohammed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has little elbow room to look for willing coalition partners for the second round in order to make up for the five-percent vote-gap that denied him a win in the first round. If the trend from the past continues, it could then be a coalition of the runners-up against the front-runner, who can at best then campaign in a ‘coalition with the people’ – which did not take the MDP to its electoral goal in the first round.

It has been a loud commentary on the state of politics since the country became a multi-party democracy five years ago. At the time, the MDP was a second-round beneficiary of a hasty coalition that was put in place after the results for the first round were out. Today, the very same party and the very same candidate who came to power on a coalition platform are contesting alone, and campaigning for a non-coalition set-up for the nation.