One-­Horse Race

With most leaders of the opposition parties either in jail or in exile, President Abdulla Yameen appears set to win the approaching presidential election.

- R.K.Radhakrishnan

IT IS ANOTHER ELECTION YEAR IN THE Maldives, which is to hold its third presidential election since becoming a multiparty democracy. However, there are clear signs that the days of multiparty democracy are over in the archipelago nation.

Almost all the leaders of the major opposition parties are in jail or in exile. It appears certain that this time there is one person who wants to make sure that there is only one player left in the field—President Adbulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom. He won the last race in 2013 merely because far too many influential Maldivian leaders did not trust President Mohamed Nasheed and backed him instead. A couple of years after he took over as President, almost all those who backed Yameen are out of the charmed circle, including his own half-brother, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the man who ruled the Maldives with an iron hand for almost three decades before he decided to do the right thing in 2006.

Maumoon, who went back to the Maldives in January this year, suddenly found that he had a posse of policemen at his residence. On enquiry, he was told that this was for his own security since there were death threats against him. Maumoon persisted in asking who made the death threats. So far neither the police, who had posted the personnel, nor the government is willing to clarify the source of the purported threats. In the small island of Male, a city of very narrow roads in which over a third of the entire Maldives population lives, threats are not new. But there has never been any threat against established political players.