The Maldivian government’s decision to quit the Commonwealth after mounting pressure from the 53-nation group over corruption and deterioration of human rights in the Indian Ocean state was not unexpected. The Abdulla Yameen government in Maldives had been put on notice on September 23 by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) and given six months to address concerns including the detention and prosecution of opposition leaders, meddling with the judiciary and undermining democratic institutions. The island country had been under close watch since its first democratically-elected government of Mohammed Nasheed was forced to resign under duress in 2012 and replaced by the dictatorial regime of Yameen, which drew sustenance from China. The drift towards China at the cost of India was seemingly halted sometime ago when Yameen visited New Delhi and assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he supported India’s war on terror, but suspicions continued to simmer amid reports that in secret negotiations, Maldives had offered bases to China in the Indian Ocean state. When Britain accepted Nasheed’s request for asylum recently, it was clear that Yameen’s Maldives and Britain were set on a collision course. There was little evidence that Maldives was acting on the CMAG’s ultimatum to deal fairly with opposition leaders and to restore democratic institutions, so the Yameen government thought it prudent to pre-empt any action by the Commonwealth.
Predictably, western and Indian pressure on Yameen would now intensify even as he grapples with a host of internal challenges. A former vice-president, Ahmed Adeeb, was convicted in June of trying to assassinate Yameen by planting a bomb on his speedboat. Much of the opposition is upset with him and a controversy over money laundering, besides allegations of exerting undue pressure on judges, surfaced recently in a documentary broadcast by al-Jazeera. Islamic extremism is also an issue with up to 100 Maldivians (from a population of 300,000) believed to have left the country for Syria as of January 2015. Indeed, Yameen is surviving on borrowed time. It is debatable for how long the Chinese prop would work to his advantage.
