South Asian giants India is unhappy with Commonwealth over the handling of Maldives which ultimately prompted the island nation to exit the now 52 member bloc last month.
According to Indian media sources, New Delhi was not convinced that the Commonwealth’s active role had not been helpful in resolving the political strife in the archipelago.
Maldives left the Commonwealth last month citing unfair and unjust treatment weeks after the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) – the enforcement mechanism of the Commonwealth – threatened to suspend Maldives from the council at its next meeting in March if effective steps were not taken to resolve the ongoing political crisis in the archipelago .
“CMAG has continued to take unjust and biased actions against us. They’ve made life very difficult for the Maldives because we are strategically small,” the foreign ministry had said in a statement after leaving the Commonwealth.
The Indian position articulated at CMAG meetings was that “the Commonwealth should not coerce the Maldives, but to provide assistance to help it to conform to rules”, online newspaper 'The Wire' quoting sources said.
Indian government has also accused the UK government which has granted political asylum to several political leaders including former president Mohamed Nasheed of pushing CMAG to place the Maldives on its formal agenda.
“By putting CMAG onto the Maldives and by issuing strictures, the Commonwealth has been ensuring that normal South Asian politics is not being played out there,” an Indian official told The Wire.
India has had to face a “lot of pressure” in fending off UK-led moves since last year to put the Maldives on the formal agenda, first at the CMAG’s meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2015 and then two months later at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting summit in Malta.
“There was a lot of pressure in Malta that the Maldives had to be on the agenda. At the table, General Vijay Kumar Singh told others really firmly that the time was not right. There was a lot of argument, made politely. The compromise was that a ministerial mission would travel to Maldives and that an extraordinary session [of CMAG] would be held in January [2016],” an Indian government official was quoted.
Earlier this year, president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom on a visit to India, publicly acknowledged that he was visiting New Delhi to thank the Indian government for “protecting” the Maldives in the CMAG deliberations which had examined whether the democratic processes in the atoll nation had broken down.
India was one of the nine countries in the CMAG team that visited the Maldives in February.
For small states, the incentive to be part of the Commonwealth is that it is an easier platform for their voices to be heard. But the Commonwealth’s informal culture seemingly contrasted with the CMAG’s more coercive mandate to deal with “serious or persistent” violations of the 1991 Harare principles.
“This tension had been brewing for some time,” an official said.
“I am sure that this [the departure of the Maldives from the Commonwealth] will have a demonstrative effect on other small islands states. They would be watching what international impact there would be from the Maldives leaving the group,” said an official.
According to the media report, India is extremely unhappy with the Commonwealth secretary-general Patricia Scotland for pushing the agendas of three countries, especially the UK.
Alarm bells went off in South Block in July after the Daily Mail published a series of articles accusing the secretary-general of hiring a new “transition team” with the help of an outside consultancy firm belonging to a “friend”.
In a missive to the then 53 Commonwealth high commissioners, Scotland claimed that the transition team was to help reduce her learning curve and allow her to “hit the ground running”. She also argued in another letter that she had “the discretion to recruit persons the secretary-general deems appropriate and who add value”.
Amid the reports of alleged financial profligacy by Scotland, Indian officials even mulled over whether the country should cut its financial contributions to the Commonwealth and divert the money saved towards the UN – which has been a principal platform for recent Indian diplomatic efforts.
“Remaining in the Commonwealth is a legacy issue… But, this (reducing funds) is still a possibility if the situation persists,” sources said.
