Beyond the ballot box

The population of the Maldives breathed a collective sigh of relief this week as their Supreme Court rejected the ruling party's attempts to invalidate last month's presidential election. Despite the comprehensive defeat of President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom in a trouble-free poll on 23 September 2018, and an almost-gracious concession the following morning, the reeling regime had quickly reverted to authoritarianism over the next few weeks, threatening to reject the result. Perhaps the victory of the sole opposition candidate, Ibrahim 'Ibu' Mohamed Solih, had been a mirage?

A handsome win for the candidate of the Maldives United Opposition (MUO), a coalition squeezed into existence by President Yameen's galloping autocracy, was likely in a clean ballot. But what was unexpected was a free and fair vote, given the steps that had been taken to skew the playing field. President Yameen's five-year term had left the young democracy deeply unbalanced: give the country its first ever bridge, take away all the opposition leaders and put them in jail; give a handful of new airports, take away basic constitutional rights; give reclaimed land, new apartments, etc, but take USD 80 million in the country's largest ever corruption scandal.