Maldives set for crunch elections

MALE, MALDIVES : As election officials made final preparations for nationwide polls in the Maldives, the European Union said it is not sending observers because the country has failed to meet the basic conditions for monitoring.

In the capital, Male, pink and green campaign banners hung in the streets. Election commission spokesman Ahmed Akram said the country was fully prepared to hold a free and fair election on Sunday. But in neighbouring Sri Lanka, exiled former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, a leader of the opposition, said on Friday that the vote could be rigged. A decade after Maldivians took to the streets to welcome democracy to the series of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean, voters head to the ballot box in what has become a referendum on whether democracy will stay.

The Maldives’ third multiparty presidential election is being held five years after incumbent President Yameen Abdul Gayoom began consolidating power, rolling back press and individual freedoms, asserting control over independent governmental institutions and jailing or forcing major political rivals into exile.

“There is a need to reorient ourselves and take stock of what we have lost,” said Ahmed Tholal, a former member of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives. “There is a need to ask ourselves if we are willing to allow the hard work of democratizing the country to go waste.”

Beyond the postcard image the Maldives has of luxury resorts and white sand beaches, the citizens of the former British protectorate have struggled to maintain the democratic system established in 2008.

Yameen has jailed two former presidents including his halfbrother, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the Maldives’ former strongman.