The Machiavelli of Maldives


Indrani Bagchi
New Delhi, December 5, 2012
Hassan Saeed, the Maldives president, Waheed’s special adviser, is being seen as the Machiavellian force behind Waheed government’s decision to terminate the GMR agreement. According to high level sources, this Malaysia-educated president of a tiny Dhivehi Quamee Party has convinced Waheed to use this issue as a platform for forthcoming presidential elections due in 2013.
Masood Imad, spokesperson for Maldives president, denies this. “Saeed is only a special adviser and is currently not even in the country.”
Imad says Indian companies continue to be present and welcomed in Maldives. “The Maldives government had offered to send a special envoy of the president, the defence minister, to India to explain our stand on the GMR issue. But that request is still pending with the MEA.”
MEA sources said the government had received the request for a special envoy, to which the Indian government had responded by saying he would be welcomed and received appropriately. As it turned out, the envoy did not come, and the Maldivian foreign minister Abdul Samad Abdulla arrived here last week for consultations with external affairs minister Salman Khurshid.
Saeed had dashed off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking India to help terminate the agreement. The GMR issue was so explosive, he said, it was contributing to the rise of extremism and anti-India, anti-GMR sentiment inside Maldives. GMR, he alleged, had paid politicians in Maldives which had turned public opinion against them. Apart from levying an airport tax, Saeed said, GMR had evicted local workers and replaced them with Indian workers. GMR sources indicated the opposite was true.
Maldives has given GMR until Saturday December 8 to get out of the Male airport. GMR’s CEO Andrew Harrison, in a statement said, “The injunction clearly prevents them from taking the action outlined in their notice issued to us stating that the airport would be taken over at the end of the 7 day period. We remain resolute in our position and there is no question of an offer being made and certainly no question of any alleged offer being accepted as we will simply not agree to our rights nor the injunction being undermined in any way.”
This can only have an ugly ending. While there has been no communication with Maldives president, Waheed, the foreign minister told Salman Khurshid that they were determined to evict GMR. India can either look the other way, or adopt strong-arm tactics neither of which has any good implications.
Ousted Mohamed Nasheed, wrote this week, “India should have foreseen the consequences its investments would later face in endorsing a regime consisting of elements that had previously shown its disapproval towards major Indian investments. India should have taken its time to assess the political situation of the country and should have confirmed the legitimacy of the controversial regime before accepting it. However, failure to do so resulted in the scrapping of its single largest investment by the very government it had recognised.”
End

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