Maldives president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom Friday defended his government's decision to exit the Commonwealth by insisting that the archipelago needs local solutions to its problems.
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 .
Speaking at a mass ruling party rally held in capital Male on Friday to mark its fifth anniversary, president Yameen for the first since leaving the Commonwealth said the Maldives was more than capable of finding local solutions to its problems.
President Yameen insisted that the Maldives would always welcome friendly relations from any country or international body provided it receives the respect it deserves as a soverign nation.
The government would not accept outside influence that threatens or undermines the sovereignty and independence of the island nation, he stressed.
"Didn't we announce that we must not remain part of the Commonwealth? What did we hear when we insisted that we would not allow any outside force to dictate our internal matters? But now we are hearing a different tune. If we can't solve our own problems then we have to rely on outside solutions. No. This government does not need outside solutions," president said hitting back at opposition criticism of the decision to quit the now 52 member bloc.
The Commonwealth had attracted criticism especially from regional giants India for the way it handled the political strife in the archipelago.
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 had said recently.
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.
