Election of the Day: Maldives

Today, The Maldives, a sparsely populated, deeply conservative island nation in the Indian Ocean, will hold their 4th presidential election under the rules of the 2008 constitution, which allowed for competitive elections with multiple candidates. (Prior to 2008, presidential elections were yes-or-no referendums on a single appointed candidate.) Legislative elections are on a different calendar, so only the Presidency is up today. There are eight candidates total on the ballot. If no candidate receives 50% of the vote, a runoff election will be held in a few weeks. There appear to be three contenders who are noteworthy. First, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the incumbent president representing the Maldivian Democratic Party, is seeking a second term. This has been the most successful party of the multiparty era in the Maldives, winning 65/87 seats in the legislature in the last legislative election. (Currently they only have 53 seats, as 12 members left the party earlier this year–more on that later.)

Two opposition parties, the Progressive Party of the Maldives and the People’s National Congress, are supporting Mohamed Muizzu, the current mayor of the capital city (and home to half the population) Malé and former housing and infrastructure minister under Solih’s predecessor, Abdullah Yameen. Speaking of Yameen, he had sought to challenge Solih to a rematch, with the support of Progressive Party, but, in a series of events unlikely to be duplicated in certain other countries, he was declared ineligible to run by the Supreme Court, on the grounds that he had been convicted of a range of charges, including theft, money laundering, and making false statements to police, and is about to return to prison for an 11 year sentence. He was first convicted in 2019 and had already served two years, but his half-brother and the president-dictator prior to the 2008 constitution Maumoon Abdul Gayoom returned to politics to campaign to get his conviction overturned. He was successful, and in 2021 he was released from prison. However, he had been an extremely corrupt president who committed many crimes, so he was then charged with more of them, for which he was convicted and sentenced in December. The Supreme Court decision to remove him from the ballot occurred in early August, just five weeks before the election. Muizzi presumably offers the opposition a cleaner and less controversial candidate, who as far as I can tell has not been publicly implicated in Yameen’s crimes, and whose appeal lies in his competence at the completion of important infrastructure projects. However, as American readers know all too well, whether this improves the opposition’s chances remains an open question.

As I noted, there is a third candidate of interest. Ilyas Labeeb represents a new party formed earlier this year called simply “The Democrats.” The Democrats were formed from a schism in Solih’s MDP, that appeared to revolve around a series of conflicts between the sitting president and current speaker of Parliament (and former president, elected to the office in 2008), Mohamed Nasheed. Nasheed challenged Solih for the party’s nomination in January and lost. Nasheed alleged shenanigans, claiming many of his supporters had been cut from the party registry prior to the primary election. He and 11 allies in parliament left the party and formed a new parliamentary party, while preparing a presidential run for This is a pretty epic development in Maldivian politics, as Nasheed and Solih, by far the two most powerful men, had been close allies for generations and indeed were close childhood friends. The substance of this dispute is difficult to discern, but it appears to have something to do with events surrounding a 2021 assassination attempt against Nasheed, motivated by his (by Maldivian standards) socially liberal views, and support for some new hate speech legislation. (The MDP isn’t a leftist or liberal party by any reasonable definition, but appears to be more socially liberal than any opposition party of note, including the Muizzi-supporting Progressive party, who are not at all progressive in the way we Americans understand the term.) Solih initially supported the legislation, but pulled that support to curry favor with a minor conservative party that had supported him. But it may have more to do with a good old fashioned power struggle, as Nasheed had pushed for reforms that would shift the Maldives toward a more parliamentary system with a prime minister, rather than a speaker, and a weaker presidency. (This may explain why he is not running for the presidency himself, but rather supporting his legislative ally Ilyas Labeeb; he wants to retain what the position he wishes to empower).

So, high drama. The two opposition candidates challenging a sitting president are seen quite reasonably as closely tied to both previously elected presidents under the current constitutional order. But what is the election about, substantively? For the challenge launched by Labeeb and the Democrats, it’s about constitutional reforms–Nasheed and Labeeb have been advocates of a referendum on shifting toward a more parliamentary system. For Muizzi, a major conflict point appears to be the small country’s foreign relations. Solih has sought to deepen and improve ties to India, and promoted what he calls an “India-First” foreign policy, while Muizzi’s coalition launched an “India-Out” campaign in 2020, targeting Indian military bases but also India’s presence and influence more generally. Muizzi is seen as the “pro-China” candidate, seeking to deepen ties with China.

As I was finishing this post, I noticed a just-posted article suggesting that Muizzi is leading in the early vote counting, but with Labeeb taking enough votes to keep Muizzi and Labeeb under the 50% threshold. We may know the outcome in a matter of hours, or if it’s close, tomorrow.