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.
The regime seemed unmoved by repeated international criticism, warnings of targeted sanctions and fears about the election's credibility Long-overdue reforms of the criminal justice system were kept in abeyance. Two of the country's best and brightest writers –Yameen Rasheed and Ahmed Rilwan – were cruelly silenced, one killed and another disappeared. When people were finally given a chance to express themselves on 23 September, they made their choice clear. Despite the rampant misuse of state resources, flagrant attempts at mass vote-buying, a desperate waiving of fees owed to the state, and the campaign-trail inaugurations of five years of infrastructure projects, the people decided that President Yameen had taken more than he had given and voted him out.
Almost a quarter of a million voters (89 percent of the 262,135 eligible) queued in the tropical heat outside polling stations on 187 inhabited islands, 35 island resorts and four overseas locations, some for up to eight hours. Most people expected an intervention, an incident – any opportunity to disrupt the process at any moment. But they queued anyway, and in the end, the polls closed peacefully. Polling was extended by three hours and then the results began to trickle in.