Prospects for Democratic Transition: Panel Discussion hosted by US Ambassador

The US-Maldives Friendship week had many items. The spriteliest moment came with the Rhythm Nation, when US dancers and musicians joined in the week-long celebrations for a high energy hip hop dance show. The grand finale was fusion music of Bodu Beru and Hip Hop. Perhaps there wasn’t a dull moment in the week. The Open Society is very pleased to have been associated with at least some of the items of the week.

The Panel Discussion on “Democratic Reform in the Maldives” clearly stole the limelight, in terms of media comment and controversy. The Open Society is thankful for the US Embassy for organizing the event because we believe that the realm of ideas and free expression in this country needs to be expanded. This kind of exercise does not require a foreign host, but when local actors are polarized and allergic to each other, a friend of democracy and of the Maldives, can play a very useful role.

In any case, democrats always welcome a chance to talk to each other.

On behalf of OSA, Shaheed attended, at the invitation of the US Ambassador. Government ministers were invited to participate in the Panel Discussion but somehow none of them showed up. Perhaps either the topic or the other panelists, which included the US Ambassador, were not worth ministerial time. Shaheed was told the day before by the US Embassy that Minister Nasheed would be representing the DRP/Government on the Panel.

Quite a large audience did turn up. Again, there did not seem to be any DRP members. There were a few officials from the Foreign Ministry, the Information Ministry, Elections Office and a good attendance by the free media and NGO community. Most of the audience comprised MDP, whose chairperson did have the courtesy to grace the event. The Human Rights Commissioner and some of his associates also found democracy worth talking about.

The first speaker was the US Ambassador who was both the host and the moderator of the event. He spoke about the importance the US attached to the democratic reform agenda and on the important benchmarks for democratization. He spoke about the importance of access to rule of law and access to information and resources. He stressed the critical role of free and fair elections and the need for the government to invite election monitors early.

The government/DRP was represented by Mr. Anil, the newly appointed Commissioner for Legal Reform. He said his brief was to discuss democracy from a technical perspective rather than from a political perspective, and gave an update on the work of the Special Majlis and what outcomes one might expect in terms of the new constitution. Anil was very upbeat about the new constitution and presented it as a first-rate constitution.

Shaheed spoke next and was followed by Mariya Didi, winner of US State Department’s Woman of Courage Award last year. Mariya spoke about the lack of space for dissent and the over-bearing nature of government, including the concentration of power in the executive. She also lamented the gulf between democratic values and principles and societal attitudes towards women and the opposition.

Shaheed began by saying that he had been earlier saying that he had been optimistic about prospects for democratic reform but implied that he may now have become more guarded in his optimism about the prospects for successful democratic transition. In actual fact, he listed what he thought were the conditions that favoured a democratic transition and the conditions that were militating against it. He also identified which model of democratic transition best resembled the Maldives situation. He said even the best constitution in the world could not, in itself, guarantee democracy, but required the support of independent institutions and democratic mindsets and values.

Shaheed referred to Professor Huntington’s seminal study on democratic transitions based on the Third Wave countries and said that that wave was continuing into the 21st century.

Shaheed said Huntington identified four key variables: a) failure of government and increasing doubt over the legitimacy of government; b) rising levels of education and wealth and increasing means of demanding civil rights; c) opposition of religious leaders towards the status quo; d) external pressure on human rights; e) demonstration effects.

In nearly all these areas, Shaheed found that developments favoured democratic transition although he questioned if the appetite of the US to promote democracy had not become dampened with the way the Iraqi venture had turned. (To which the US Ambassador assured the audience that the appetite had not waned because of Iraq). Shaheed referred to the Warsaw Declaration of 2000 by 107 states recognizing that democratic states had a collective responsibility to help others to become democratic. He also noted that in 2005, the UN had adopted as an international norm, the notion of Responsibility to Protect ( ie in the event of human rights abuses).

While Shaheed found that , in terms of these five factors, the conditions seemed to favour democratic transition in the Maldives, he noted that Huntington pointed out a sixth necessary element: that the elites must believe that democracy is something that is beneficial for the people. Here Shaheed queried whether in fact the faith of the elites in democracy was contingent or unreserved. He said that not enough was being done to promote public awareness on democracy and that, being a rather closed society, there was very little scope for alternative viewpoints. He lamented the fact that the governing elites did not believe that there could be healthy difference of views and referred to pro-government websites which promoted hatred and contempt towards dissenters and the political opposition.

Shaheed described a closed society as one in which there was no world of ideas different from the world of existing facts. Thus, it is because the Maldives is a closed society that people wondered if there was anyone other than the incumbent who was fit for office. He also said that the reflexive action of the elites to explain every discordant development as “no threat to the existing state of affairs” is another feature of a closed society, and pointed to the over-reaction in the state radio and tv to the announcement by Dr . Saeed to contest the presidency next year. The announcement was measured by existing facts and was ruled out as being of no consequence to next year’s election. Shaheed also noted that the Maldives was one of only four or five countries, along with China, Cuba, Myanmar and North Korea to argue at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993 that human rights were culturally-relative rather than universal.

However, as Shaheed said, elite faith in democracy would be a necessity only where democratic transition is to be led by government. He noted that there were several routes to democracy and that they were, again to use Huntington’s typology, a) transformation, where the transition is government-led, as was the case with India and Brazil; b) replacement, where the opposition elements succeeded in replacing the authoritarian order with democracy, as in former East Germany and Romania; c) transplacement, where the government and the opposition both moved the country towards democracy as happened in Poland and former Czechoslovakia; and d) foreign intervention, as in the case of Grenada and Panama.

Shaheed ruled out intervention as an option. He suggested that the other three models still were feasible, but if certain conditions were fulfilled. If the transformation model is to succeed, he said that President Gayoom should complete the reform agenda during the current term, including establishing the independent institutions that Hassan, Jameel and Shaheed wrote about in a letter to the President earlier this month, and not contest elections in 2008.

If the President were to contest elections, then a united front of pro-democracy forces would be able to achieve democratic transition by replacement. But if they were not united, they would fail, and if the pro-democracy forces suffered an electoral defeat next year, it would be impossible to attain a peaceful democratic transition by replacement in the foreseeable future.

Shaheed also said that the most stable democratic transitions occurred when there was transplacement ie where the governing elites and the opposition forces collaborated in attaining democratic transition. In all cases, a country is deemed to have been set firmly as a democracy when two peaceful transfers of power have occurred.

Shaheed said that what would definitely bring democracy would be if President Gayoom set his mind on joining the Club of Madrid rather than seek a further term. The Club was established in the year 2000 to bring together former Heads of States who had facilitated democratic transitions in their countries.

In the discussion that followed, Shaheed also called for a government of national unity as an interim arrangement to prepare a free and fair election.