A long-serving dictator goes quietly

The Maldives

Another country

Oct 30th 2008 | MALE
From The Economist print edition

AFPThe wheels came off at last for Gayoom

“IN POLITICS in this country,” Mohamed Nasheed once told The Economist, “you’re either in government or in jail.” Under house arrest at the time, Mr Nasheed, known as Anni, had indeed until this year spent elections in the Maldives either locked up or in exile. Yet on October 28th he won 54% of the votes in a run-off election, to oust Asia’s longest-serving leader, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, after 30 years in power. Remarkably, Anni the jailbird is now Anni the president.

So ends a regime that has ruthlessly stifled dissent, yet has, since street protests from 2003, adopted some democratic reforms, including a separation of powers. To his credit, Mr Gayoom this week meekly accepted defeat. As results were announced, pickup trucks and motorcycles circled the island capital, Male, and yellow-clad Anni fans cheered their triumph.

But when the celebrations die down in Male and the 200 inhabited islands across which the Maldives’ 370,000 people are scattered, Mr Nasheed’s opposition alliance will not find life easy. Bowing to pressure from other opposition groups backing him, he has already promised to hold a fresh election in the middle of his five-year term. If he is to win it, his government will need to revive a flagging economy and keep some of his election promises. That may be hard in a global recession. A further complication is that Mr Gayoom’s Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party still commands a majority in parliament, and an election is not due until February.

Famous as a luxury honeymoon resort, and as the country perhaps most at risk from rising sea-levels, the Maldives has long had a secret other life: as a dictatorship. Tourists, whisked in speedboats from the airport to remote islands, were sheltered from its ugly politics. Critics accuse Mr Gayoom of nepotism and of siphoning off profits from tourism. The country has fallen 31 places in a year in an index of perceived corruption compiled by Transparency International, an NGO. Mr Gayoom recently had to defend himself against allegations that he embezzled $40m provided as relief after the tsunami in 2004.

Expectations of change are high. Mr Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) campaigned under the slogan “Aneh Dhivehi Raajje” (“The Other Maldives”). But the country faces social problems not susceptible to a quick fix: overcrowding; high youth unemployment; rising crime; and a heroin epidemic, with up to 30,000 drug users, according to unofficial estimates. And in a hitherto moderate Islamic nation, religious extremism poses a new threat. In September 2007, 12 tourists were injured in a terrorist bombing in Male. The religiously conservative Adhaalath Party, which advocates the death penalty for apostasy, has backed Mr Nasheed in return for a stake in the government. Its views will be hard to reconcile with those of a liberal younger generation attracted to the MDP.

Mr Nasheed made economic development the main plank of his election campaign. He promised to balance the budget and diversify the economy, at a time when the growth in tourism seems to be slowing. The Maldives is still the richest country in South Asia in terms of GDP per head. But growth has levelled off. The fiscal deficit stands at 30% of GDP, and foreign reserves have slumped to $116m.

The danger facing Mr Nasheed is that the global economic turmoil dents tourism and condemns the Maldives to hard economic times and divisive politics. The hope, however, is that his astonishing election victory heralds the emergence of the archipelago as a genuine Islamic democracy: a beacon in the region and beyond.