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| The election impact | | |
Sreeram Chaulia
Had New Delhi granted refuge or asy-
lum to Mohamed Nasheed when he
sought shelter in the Indian high commission in Male, his chances of staging a return to power would have diminished
Elections for choosing people's representatives are the rituals and festivals of democracy. They are the minimal guarantees for fulfilling Abraham Lincoln's maxim of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people". Without elections, there is no legitimate formal mechanism to mediate relations between society and the state. However, modern-day elections have more to them than just being institutions to distribute economic resources and regulate political affairs of a nation.
They carry an external dimension that may not be as apparent as their obvious internal import. Since the international system is constituted by nation states recognised as sovereign entities, there is a tendency to believe that whatever elections occur within democratic countries are and should remain purely internal matters.
But the international behaviour of a country is also impacted by its domestic electoral winds, making the polls a subject of global attention and intrigue. In some cases, the impact can be in the opposite direction too, i.e. the internal election results are influenced by outside actors and interventions with a view to shaping or moulding countries' foreign policies and geo-strategic outlook. To illustrate the often overlooked but significant foreign dynamic of elections, let us examine two critical recent cases of the Maldives and Australia.
The Indian Ocean island of the Maldives went into a make-or-break political moment with its second presidential election, since the advent of multi-party democracy, last week. Intermingled with domestic campaign topics like high unemployment, plummeting gross domestic product growth, losses in the tourism sector and a housing crunch was the international question of which way this strategically located country would swing within a larger contest for sway among India, China and the United States.
The Maldives sits bang in the centre of what James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara of the US Naval War College term as the Indian Ocean "strategic triangle" marked by cooperation and competition among New Delhi, Beijing and Washington. Geopolitics - the art of great power-manoeuvring to gain leverage over geographical vantage points - dictates all these three big players in the Indian Ocean region to be concerned about who rules the Maldives and how friendly the regime in Male would be. Elections can be producers of anxiety not just for voters and parties within countries but also for outside powers vying for governments that cater to their respective wishes.
When the Maldives' first freely elected government of former President Mohamed Nasheed was overthrown in a "soft coup" in February 2012, it was a cause for nervousness in New Delhi, worry in Washington and hope in Beijing. Mr Nasheed's pro-India leanings and liberal secular credentials had offered strategic succour to New Delhi's attempts to remain the leading naval power in the Indian Ocean. But his forcible ejection from power and the subsequent rule by a clique that resorted to highhanded treatment of the Indian construction company, GMR, raised suspicions in New Delhi that the Chinese and the Pakistanis were gaining a foothold in the Maldives. The first-ever visit to the Maldives by a Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy ship in July this year for delivering "humanitarian medical service to local people" did not fool India. The deduction was that if Mr Nasheed had remained in office, such penetration of the Maldives by the Chinese military would not have been permitted. So we rooted for Mr Nasheed to register a comeback through the election route. |
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