Male sends messenger to ‘clarify’

While it isn’t clear if he will get a meeting or not with the Prime Minister, Abdullah will meet External Affairs minister K Natwar Singh and present Gayoom’s ‘‘point of view’’ to New Delhi.

Abdullah’s visit to India is taking on the character of a ‘‘make or break mission,’’ considering the weight New Delhi can pull in the region. Gayoom is well aware that it was an Indian intervention in November 1988, under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, who sent him 1500 troops to battle Sri Lanka-based ‘‘terrorists’’ seeking to overthrow his dictatorship, that has kept him in power for 16 of the last 26 years.

Interestingly, Gayoom’s arch-rival, the banned Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has sent its spokesperson Mohammed Latheef to the capital to participate in a SAARC economic conference late last week.

Latheef, who was thrown out of Male last September along with a handful of Maldivians who sought to set up an alternative political party, met former PM I K Gujral and other senior ex-diplomats during his stay in the capital.

While New Delhi will certainly give Abdullah a patient hearing, it is more than a little concerned about the fate of former SAARC secretary-general and ‘‘friend of India’’ Ibrahim Hussain Zaki, who along with six other parliamentarians have been detained under the state of emergency imposed by Gayoom on August 13.

Certainly, Abdullah is not likely to repeat in New Delhi what many people in Gayoom’s establishment have openly stated in Maldives Parliament or ‘Majlis’, that India has a ‘‘messy democracy’’ and that experiment cannot be replicated back home.

While India may not be willing to be seen pushing Gayoom to the wall, as a EU ‘‘fact-finding mission’’ that reached Male on Sunday intends to do, it is concerned about the ‘‘lack of democracy’’ that is the case in Male.