News Desk
MALE’ — When three former presidents of the Maldives sat together on 15 May, signed a joint statement and held a press conference, it looked like the beginning of something. The photographs were striking. Three men who had spent years as political enemies, who had imprisoned each other, accused each other of corruption and campaigned against each other with considerable venom, were suddenly at the same table, presenting a united front against the current government.
Nearly two months later, Mohamed Nasheed is admitting the alliance has not moved fast.
“After the meetings, we have not been able to move forward very quickly on that path,” Nasheed told reporters on Sunday. He was careful to add that the work has not stopped. But the gap between what was announced and what has actually happened since is visible enough that even he could not avoid the question.
The coordination committee that was formed after the initial meeting, comprising six members drawn from the teams of all three former presidents, has held two sessions. Two meetings in two months for a group that announced itself as a significant political force is not the pace of an alliance with urgency behind it.
The optics on the ground have not helped. Yameen has continued attending PNF rallies where he criticises not just the current government but Nasheed and Solih as well, describing them in terms that sit awkwardly alongside the idea of a functioning coalition. Nasheed said on Sunday that one president publicly criticising another does not prevent the three of them from meeting. That may be technically true. It does not look like solidarity.
Solih, meanwhile, has been largely absent from public view, spending an extended period abroad. For an alliance that was launched with considerable fanfare around the cause of press freedom and democratic accountability, having one of its three principals on a long holiday overseas while the streets of Male’ see periodic protests does not project seriousness of purpose.
Nasheed also said the current government has lost the confidence of the people. That may be his assessment. The local council election results from April, which the PNC won decisively, told a different story about where public sentiment sits at the ballot box.
The three-president alliance was announced as a vehicle for holding the government accountable and putting the country back on the right track. Those were the words in the signed statement. What it has produced since is two committee meetings, internal contradictions played out in public, and a press conference circuit that generates coverage without generating pressure.
Nasheed is still the most energetic of the three in public. He is talking to reporters, raising concerns about security, challenging legal decisions and promising to keep marching. But a coalition requires more than one person doing the work. And right now, the alliance that launched with such ceremony in May is looking less like a political force and more like a photograph that never became a movement.
