there’s a rea­son why the so-called ‘oppo­si­tion’ — the mal­di­vian ‘demo­c­ra­t­ic’ par­ty — is most­ly silent and per­for­ma­tive about the com­ing ref­er­en­dum to merge par­lia­men­tary and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions: because they stand to gain from it too.

one thing first: i’m not vot­ing in the local coun­cil elec­tions (i haven’t vot­ed since 2018) I think our mayoral/council options are large­ly use­less, that even inde­pen­dents (espe­cial­ly with no struc­tured plan or fore­sight) will only be stalled or ide­o­log­i­cal­ly absorbed by the elite-loy­al majori­ties in oth­er coun­cil seats, espe­cial­ly since ‘pres­i­dent’ muiz­zu has con­ve­nient­ly neutered may­oral pow­ers short­ly before he became pres­i­dent. if we had a ‘no con­fi­dence’ option, i’d have vot­ed, though.

How­ev­er, I am vot­ing in the ref­er­en­dum: against merg­ing pres­i­den­tial and par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. let me explain.

The sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and why it’s impor­tant

cur­rent­ly, what keeps rul­ing elites in check are oth­er non-rul­ing elites hin­der­ing their efforts to steal and dom­i­nate. that’s why the judi­cia­ry, par­lia­ment, and exec­u­tive are all sep­a­rate branch­es (at least ide­al­ly) of the gov­ern­ment: so that no one has total con­trol or pow­er over any­one.

the fact that our par­lia­men­tary, pres­i­den­tial, and local coun­cil elec­tions are all paced a year apart from each oth­er goes to fur­ther ensure that: peo­ple have the time to wit­ness how lead­ers per­form (usu­al­ly, they mess up by a year or so) and use that to inform their next votes for oth­er branch­es of pow­er.

there’s an impor­tant unin­tend­ed effect of sep­a­rat­ing pow­ers:

because no rul­ing elite fac­tion or par­ty can com­plete­ly take con­trol, they’re always unable to bring about com­plete author­i­tar­i­an vio­lence.

for exam­ple, if mdp is in pow­er, then ppm (or pnc/pnf in today’s terms) will do every­thing in their pow­er to frus­trate mdp-elites’ attempts at con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er, and vice ver­sa. if pnc/pnf was in pow­er, mdp will do every­thing in their pow­er to expose pnc/pnf cor­rup­tion, and vice ver­sa.

they’re not doing so out of civic duty or the good­ness of their hearts, they’re doing so because if the ‘oth­er’ tribe/faction wins total pow­er, then all of ‘their’ tribe/faction’s pow­ers, wealth, and influ­ence will be stripped away — and most of ‘their’ tribe/faction loy­al­ists would be all thrown in prison, exiled, or what­ev­er else.

this dynam­ic has exist­ed since long before the Mau­moon era, as eliz­a­beth colton (1995) describes:

_{^{“Jeal­ousy, envy (ހަސަދަ) of oth­er mem­bers of the elite, and obses­sion with revenge (ބަދަލުހިފުން) dom­i­nate polit­i­cal action in Mal­dives. The elite group in pow­er con­trols the country’s lit­tle wealth, and the for­mer elite group becomes envi­ous and seeks to seize that pow­er (and thus wealth) from the incum­bent pow­er­hold­ers.”}}

it’s noth­ing new, real­ly. how­ev­er, this sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers is ben­e­fi­cial for us for all the rea­sons the ‘farud­hee-zin­maa’ bros would try to gaslight you into vot­ing for their can­di­dates in their stu­pid pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test polls: it buys us time to organ­ise, it makes sure no one can go into total fas­cism, and elites fight­ing each oth­er often leads to oth­er elites get­ting exposed or neutered for the time being.

the dan­gers of total super­ma­jor­i­ty pow­er con­sol­i­da­tion can be seen in exam­ples like how the no-con­fi­dence motion against home min­is­ter ihu­san failed despite evi­dence.

there is a rea­son why Mdp is dead silent (and if they do speak, it’s min­i­mal and per­for­ma­tive) on this dan­ger­ous issue: because they expect the yel­low-to-pink-to-yel­low elec­toral cycle to repeat, and if it does, gain­ing total con­trol in one fell swoop allows them to con­sol­i­date pow­er like nev­er before. of course they’re drop-dead silent on this. why would mdp even both­er? they’re all guilty of cor­rup­tion, pow­er-backed sex­u­al crimes, and so on them­selves.

The strate­gic pur­pose to hold­ing the ref­er­en­dum on the same day as the local coun­cil elec­tions

it’s sim­ple.

they want to bank on psy­cho­log­i­cal exhau­sa­tion. fur­ther­more, they want any dis­course about the ref­er­en­dum to get dwarfed and silenced by all the mud-sling­ing and dra­mat­ics that’ll sur­round our coun­cil and may­oral can­di­dates in due time (yes, it’s going to hap­pen, it’s a mat­ter of when, not if — all these peo­ple utter­ly hate each oth­er and many peo­ple have hor­ri­ble social records, what do you even think is going to hap­pen at the tail-end?)

the coun­cil elec­tion is the cir­cus.

It is being used to dis­tract you from the actu­al thing you should be par­tic­i­pat­ing in. this is some­thing you can mean­ing­ful­ly influ­ence. the ref­er­en­dum’s out­come will affect your future sig­nif­i­cant­ly. the coun­cil elec­tions will not. the ref­er­en­dum’s out­come will deter­mine just how much hard­er it’ll become to organ­ise a rev­o­lu­tion­ary pop­u­lar move­ment against this entire neolib­er­al cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem.

vote in the ref­er­en­dum. re-reg­is­ter too.