In his congratulatory message to Maldives’ President-elect Mohamed Muizzu, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated on social media that ‘India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested… bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region’. The simple message said it all: India’s willingness to continue to work with the president that the Maldivian people have elected for themselves as before, and at the same time, stressing New Delhi’s continued adherence to the prime minister’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy without reference to political changes in the archipelago-nation and also underlining the existing concerns on larger IOR security, where given its sizes, India had a responsibility to the region as a whole.
Modi’s was possibly the first congratulatory message of the kind for the Maldivian President-elect from any head of government. Both Pakistan and China followed, with their envoys in the capital Male, too, putting out a congratulatory message on the social media platform ‘X’. And with this one message, New Delhi has clearly indicated its intention, of walking up to the halfway mark. India has extended a hand of friendship and cooperation, and as always, how the new leadership acts/reacts will decide the course of bilateral cooperation and regional collaborations, as always.
By taking upon himself the task of congratulating the Maldivian President-elect, Prime Minister Modi too has indicated his unreserved eagerness to work with the Muizzu when he takes over as president on the customary 11 November, the nation’s Republic Day. As may be recalled, the Indian prime minister was the only global leader to be invited and to be present at the inauguration of outgoing President Ibrahim Mohamed ‘Ibu’ Solih five years back.
Stresses and strains
There is still no gain-saying that all is well for India in a new administration under Muizzu. There were multiple stresses and strains for India, but from the Opposition PPM-PNC combine that Muizzu belongs to, centred on jailed party leader and predecessor president Abdulla Yameen’s ‘India Out’ campaign, which often took the shape of ‘India Military Out’ campaign. The combine was seen as being either unsure of itself or sending out confusing signals on what it wanted out of India – whether to exit Maldives (under a future government of theirs) or only to withdraw Indian military personnel, which they claim existed without evidence but which the two governments have been consistently denying.
The combined governments’ submission was that the Indian personnel were not carrying weapons to call them ‘military personnel’. Though they came from the ranks of the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, they were only pilots and technical personnel for the three helicopters and a Dornier fixed-wing aircraft that New Delhi had gifted the southern neighbour for maritime surveillance and also humanitarian operations – to airlift emergency patients to capital Male for urgently-required medical treatment, unavailable in their islands/atolls.
Through quick intervention and double-quick ejection on the completion of past missions, like Operation Cactus to neutralise a coup bid involving mercenaries in 1988, and post-tsunami rescue, relief and restoration operations in 2004-05, followed less than a decade later by Operation Neer (December 2014), the Tamil word ‘neer’ meaning ‘water, by supplying tonnes of drinking and potable water by IAF transporters and navy vessels. That was after the lone desalination plant for the capital Male, housing 40-per cent of the nation’s 400,000-plus population, resided, was gutted in a fire accident.
Incidentally, it was possibly the first time that a nation’s military was involved in a unique humanitarian operation of this kind, going beyond multiple supplies that could include clean water for their own fighting troops. As coincidence would have it, the respective governments were headed by President Yameen and Prime Minister Modi. Not once through these three operations through two-plus decades, involving Indian military personnel did India wait for the host-government to bid them a gracious bye to leave. Instead, Indian military personnel left with all their men and material, once the specific requirement for their presence and operations had been met.
Through these operations, India had also convinced sceptics in the host country – be it Maldives or Sri Lanka, which was also similarly devastated by the Boxer Day Asian tsunami in 2004, that it was not coveting a military base in the respective countries and could move men and material at the shortest notice (as happened on all three occasions in the case of Maldives), if and when required. This fact stands out especially in Maldives, the PPM-PNC Opposition of the Yameen-Muizzu duo and more so a section of the social media keeps harping on the nation’s ‘independence and sovereignty’ with particular reference to the presence of ‘foreign military personnel’. Though the Yameen camp had repeatedly mentioned India by name in this context, throughout the two-phase campaign for the two-stage presidential poll, Muizzu himself did not name any country by name.
Perceptions and possibilities
The reasons need to be known and understood, particularly outside Maldives, starting with the strategic community in India – who also feed the local media with their less-than-learned comments to the local media and perceptions on what’s wrong with the Yameen camp’s perceptions and possibilities vis a vis India – in the past and also in the future. For instance, there is the Uthuru Thila Falhu (UTF) island harbour for the Maldivian coast guard, funded and constructed by India. This has been one of the issues haunting bilateral relations apart from the so-called presence of ‘Indian military personnel’. Independent of the India factor(s), there is the more recent Maldives-Mauritius IMBL (international maritime boundary line) issue, to settle only a part of which President Solih had written a letter to Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jagaunath late last year.
Like with the UTF issue, the Solih government did claim that it had not compromised Maldivian interests in the Mauritius’ case too. However, owing to poor to non-existent communication, which is a basic requirement in any democracy, neither did Solih’s MDP (Maldivian Democratic Party) administration convince the political Opposition, nor the more sympathetic sections of the Male elite. By the time Team Solih seemingly understood the gaffe, the damage had been done – as the results would show. Between the two phases of the poll, the government confirmed as genuine a social media leak of the text of Solih’s letter to Jagannauth. Ahead of the second-phase polling Solih announced the extension of his ‘reckless’ (?) civilian housing schemes (to woo the voters) to UTF island, with a promised reclamation of 250 hectares for the purpose. The implication was that the harbour island would be thrown open to civilians (hence the media, too) to see for themselves if there was any Indian military presence, more so on a permanent basis and more than maybe required at the construction and training stages.
If and if only the Solih administration had been less secretive and more transparent about the UTF project, much of the domestic misgivings would have rendered the Opposition charges – and the latter too would have seen reassured, if that is what they actually sought. During the course of the campaign, Team Muizzu, including the challenger, had promised to publish all agreements with foreign governments – but with a rider on those that ‘concerns national security’. Hence, it is for the Muizzu government and also the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) to decide what in the UTF agreement, if at all, concerned ‘national security’. India does not really come into the future. But if their reading and understanding of the documents concerned would help clear the cloud that is hanging in the Team Yameen’s perception of India, it should be cleared in the normal course.
The same applies to the India-funded 6.74-km Thilamale sea bridge, the single largest project in the country, connecting Male with two neighbourhood islands, to help promote industrialisation and also de-congest the capital city, which is the most crowded capital in South Asia. A PhD-holder in structural engineering from Leeds University, UK, Muizzu was talking about ‘fast-tracking’ the multiple development agreements, without clarifying if it would be done internally and/or with the overseas builder or if there could well be a change of the contracting party. Under President Yameen, it may be recalled, the government commissioned a Chinese firm to complete the unfinished part of the Male International Airport expansion works, after throwing out the Indian infra major, GMR Group. In doing so, the Yameen government readily paid huge compensation and damages to GMR, as ordered by a Singapore-based arbitration court
India First and India Out
Not many people, both inside and outside Maldives seem to know it, and those who may have known in the past, seem to have erased it from memory. The much-used ‘India First’ policy, often attributed to the Solih government or the previous MDP government of estranged former party boss and incumbent Parliament Speaker, Mohammed Nasheed (2008-12). But the fact is that ‘India First’ was a Yameen coinage when in power. Likewise, the UTF project and also the Indian gift of a Dornier aircraft, over and above the helicopters committed during the Nasheed presidency, too were Yameen initiatives.
Now with Yameen’s leadership back in the driving seat, the government combine as also President Muizzu after stepping in to office, may still want to review, not necessarily the multiple Indian agreements, but their own positions, after they have had access to related documents for a transparent and unbiased review. It still is on India’s platter, starting with the media and the strategic community, not to upset the apple-cart, if it could happen. From the Indian government side, New Delhi may have to revisit some of its pro-democracy posturing and public statements in the aftermath of the Yameen presidency imposing Emergency in February 2018, after the Supreme Court had unilaterally freed the jailed-and-self-exiled MDP president Nasheed and a few other ‘political prisoners’.
Yameen’s ‘India Out’ campaign was a product of estrangement with India, especially after his electoral defeat in 2018, which threw up common Opposition candidate Solih as President, after electoral laws barred Nasheed from contesting. In its current review of the post-Solih bilateral relations, New Delhi needs to remember how coming literally from back, Muizzu could muster a high 46 per cent vote-share in the first-round against the incumbent’s 39 per cent, just after four weeks of poll campaign against the latter’s five long years. The final victory figure, 53.9-46.1 per cent, also reiterated the forgotten – or, unnoticed fact – that Yameen, even while losing the presidency as the incumbent in 2018, had actually polled a respectably substantial 42-per cent vote-share, all of it on his own steam.
China factor
The last but not necessarily the least of bilateral issues that will require to be addressed with a new president in place pertains to extra-regional power, China. Non-Maldivian media reports and commentaries on Muizzu’s candidacy and victory have consistently been referring to him as ‘pro-China’. The fact is that Muizzu by himself has not expressed any view on any foreign country through his three years as Male City Mayor, or as the Opposition candidate in the presidential polls now. He has not even remotely referred to China any which way, even granting that his periodic mention of ‘foreign agreements, national independence’, etc., might have referred to India, if only by default, if at all. Whatever attributes that are made to him are in relation to the un-erased perceptions and memories about the Yameen leadership and government. Maybe, there is a need to wait and watch, not only about how the Muizzu government relates to India, but also how differently Yameen too may do so – if at all.
There is no denying that China (too) was openly welcomed in Yameen’s Maldives, especially after he visited China twice in two years, and President Xi Jinping became the first Chinese leader to came down to the archipelago in between. The multiple projects, starting with the prestigious and people-centric Sinamale Bridge, connecting capital Male and the airport island of Hulhule, and a few housing and social sector development projects also involved China, which has been around in this sector since the commencement of post-tsunami reconstruction, under Presidents Gayoom, Nasheed and Waheed.
Yameen was also fast-tracked an FTA with China, where too his government could have been as transparent as his combine wanted successor Solih administration to be with all ‘foreign agreements’. The Solih government did not have the MDP-controlled Parliament to consider and/or pass the China FTA, but then until the last fortnight of the first-round poll, it did sign or launch at least two China-funded projects. The problem was thus not about China or India or any other nation funding development projects.
An aspiration-driven small-island nation cannot do without. The question is how to make sure that how extra-regional powers are not introduced in ways that it seeks to test regional stability and security – or perceptions of the Indian kind vis-a-vis China have been. It is this one issue that needs to be addressed – and addressed together. The question is which of the two countries, whether India or Maldives has to take the initiative under a Muizzu government, Yameen leadership – and how.
It is not like who blinks first. Rewinding to circa 2013, when Yameen became the president, may help figure out where to begin and begin both should. After all, India has been the single-largest provider of all essentials, from food to medicines, and every daily needs, for the average Maldivians – which a Maldivian government can afford to overlook only at the risk of becoming unpopular nearer home, what with periodic elections, to Parliament next April and all loc al councils across the country, between now and the next presidential polls five years from now, in 2028.
The article first appeared in First Post
