Afaal’s Column

“This article was first published at Dr. Abdullah Waheed’s Blog on Monday, November 24, 2008. This is a slightly controversial article representing my views. There were some very strong comments to the article. If you would like to see the comments please visit this article at Dr Waheed’s blog. I have brought it to my blog so that I will have an archive of all what I have written.”

On October 8, 2008 and on October 28, 2008 the Maldives underwent arguably the most democratic, the freest and the fairest elections in her entire history. This paves the new direction for future elections in the country.

Among the elections held in the country, the upcoming parliamentary election would be one that needs to be watched very carefully. In the past parliamentary elections have been influenced by money, and people with high governmental influence. Maldives went through a stage where the people were, in my words “made corrupt” by persuading them to accept money, goods and many other favours. This lead to a mass corruption where votes were given in return for something, i.e. votes were bought and many people still think that this perhaps is the norm.

Given this, during the last two parliamentary elections a large number of new faces came into both the Special Majlis and the Majlis. Their intentions were clear from what they have done so far. They have fought definitely on behalf of the people in a way that no previous parliament has ever done. They have passed the new constitution that is modern and people friendly. Many laws, most of them good and some with flaws while other laws contradicting each other were also passed.

No one in the country can deny that the current parliament’s achievement in facilitating the democratic process, making the government more accountable, and the contributions to the special Majlis in the separation of powers is historic. The achievement of the outgoing Special Majlis in getting a new constitution needs mentioning.

Ironically, the sad truth though is, in order to bring this to the people, powerful business people and other influential people had to, in my words “further corrupt the citizens” by pumping more money and doing more favours to get votes. Votes were sold to the highest bidder last time around. Perhaps this was the only way that these members could have penetrated into the parliament.

Question now is that are the same parliamentarians going to come out this election and advocate that what they did was wrong? Would they come out clean?

Maldivians will definitely watch the actions of these people carefully. Especially these were the very people during the last presidential election, were most vocal and critical about this issue targeting it to the then ruling party’s actions. Also, though we have a presidential system, parties will be fighting to get as many members in. Are there going to be totally new politicians who will defy the odds? Will there be those who have the courage to stand up to make the election clean? Would there be those who would and could educate and persuade the public to go on the right path? Only time will tell. We will have to hope that this endemic does not blow into an epidemic but rather get eradicated.

“This article was first published at Dr. Abdullah Waheed’s Blog on Friday, November 14, 2008 after President Nasheed was sworn in. This article got a large number of responses from readers and with mixed views. If you would like to see the comments please visit this article at Dr Waheed’s blog. I have brought it to my blog so that I will have an archive of all what I have written.”

After a long and hard struggle to attain democracy in the Maldives, 28 October 2008 marked a historic day that led to the end of a 30 year long presidency followed by a courageous display of democratic transition from both the out going and in coming presidents. Like the vast majority of people who voted for change, I waited anxiously for the new beginning. Finally on 11 November 2008, a moment long awaited, a new chapter headlined in the Maldivian democracy, a new president was sworn in.

Now comes the time of delivery. The first impressions are always important. I was one eager listener to the first Presidential Address from a different person in my whole life. I had a lot of expectations. What directions are we going to take? After listening to the Address, it took some time for me to really think about what was said. What was the message? Keeping what I thought for myself, I asked around a lot of people what they thought of the speech. Many were unable to say something concrete but most of the intellectual people that I asked were not really impressed with it. One of them told me that, and I quote “The campaign is now over, why he delivered another campaign speech after being sworn in!” Well I felt kind of the same.

So what shall a good presidential address do? In 1946 George Orwell published an essay “Politics and the English Language” that describes some insight into good political speeches. Many of the American analysts still use this assay as a baseline for speech assessment. Though the speech was not in English, the inaugural address of the President exhibited some staleness and vagueness which according to Orwell, lacks the strength of such a speech. Also the address didn’t meet Orwell’s criteria for an effective political speech because it was filled with the same political slogans that had been in the media and campaign speeches for the last four or so years. The strategic directions rolling over to the implementation of the slogans were lacking.

As for me I felt that the President delivered a vision statement. I agree that the promises need to be renewed but that renewal shall now come with strategic direction. I was expecting elaborations on the current economic situation of the country and specific strategies to address it. Elaborations on the ‘how’ of tackling the drug situation, health care, education and the rest of the five pledges would have been included. What actions would the President put immediately to overcome the challenges he faced and so forth.

Does this mean that the strategic communication unit of the President was up to par? Did the president do his own speech? Or did he miss to deliver part of the Address? Wasn’t it analyzed critically before delivery? Who gave the technical inputs to the Address? These are some questions among many that people may have in their minds.

Ironically, the Maldivian media also did not give a good analysis of the speech. Not surprisingly they only knew to repeat what the President said on their headlines. Rich critical analysis of such Addresses shall now be presented by the media for the benefit of the public.

“This article was first published at Dr. Abdullah Waheed’s Blog on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 after the second round of the elections. If you would like to see the comments please visit this article at Dr Waheed’s blog. I have brought it to my blog so that I will have an archive of all what I have written.”

On October 11, 2008 I submitted an article on very simple mathematics of the possibilities for swing votes in the second run of the election. In that I made a number of assumptions that would make the suggested scenarios possible.

Usually simple mathematics works. And in this case some assumptions that I made was true.

Voter turnout:

The most important assumption that I made was that voter turnout should be as high as that of the first run. In the first run the total turnout was 176,567 voters. This time around the number in fact was higher at 179,343.

Voter who voted for DRP and MDP at the first round remain constant:

Although this may not be exactly true the following math suggests that it is very close to the assumption. In the first round MDP got 44,293 votes and DRP got 71,731 votes. My calculations were based on 3 scenarios, i.e. 10% swing, 15% swing and 20% swing. I also suggested that it would be difficult to get a 20% swing. (Please read previous article I submitted to this blog for details).

So with a 15% swing my estimated numbers were, 94,889 for MDP and 81,678 for DRP. Of course these numbers are subject to a margin of error. The actual numbers attained are 97,222 for MDP and 82,121 for DRP. For an estimate I would say a close figure. The reason for saying that is if you look carefully, my estimate for a 15% swing resulted in an increase of 12.18% of votes for DRP from the first round. The actual increase is 12.65%. And the rest voted for MDP.

Comments:

I also agree that all the assumptions that I made in the previous analysis may not be true. But what I see here is that it is important that intellectual mathematical analyses are used by the media and even political parties in understanding the real voting scenarios. I encourage that media and political advisors to undertake such analysis during election times so that more objective ideas maybe obtained about the situations at hand.

Though I am not an election statistical expert, I have some academic background on statistics and also worked a large part of my working like producing statistics and using statistics for planning purposes. What I have presented in the October 11^th article and this one are just simple mathematical analysis based on the little statistical experience I have and what I read from the Internet about voting, elections and mathematical analyses elsewhere.

Please do not consider the previous article as well as this article “political” but an intellectual piece of work by an independent (which I am still) citizen of the Maldives.

Note: All figures used for the calculations are taken from the Elections Commission Website

“This article was first published at Dr. Abdullah Waheed’s Blog on Saturday, October 11, 2008. There was a very rich and heated discussion about it in that blog. If you want to see those comments please visit this article at Dr Waheed’s blog. I have brought it to my blog so that I will have an archive of all what I have written.”

Now that the first round of the election is over and everyone is gearing towards the run-off, just how big is it a task for the ruling party to swing the votes to attain a majority? I have made some assumptions on the possible scenarios on swinging the votes.

The first round showed that over 59% of the voters voted for a change in leadership. So in order for DRP to attain a majority in the run-off they will have to persuade at least over 20% of voters from each of the 3 candidates who have formed an alliance with MDP. Since IDP has bailed out of the coalition, I assume that at the most 50% will swing to DRP (may be unlikely but for argument sake). Also assuming that none of the DRP and MDP voter will swing any way, I present the following analysis (see table above).

Based on the above analysis with a 10%, 15% and 20% swing voters from each of the 3 aligning candidates give the following results (IDP swing is kept constant at 50% for above explained reasons for all calculations).
10% Swing
DRP: 78,774 votes (45%)
MDP Coalition: 97,793 votes (55%)

15% Swing
DRP: 81,678 votes (46%)
MDP Coalition: 94,889 votes (54%)

20% Swing
DRP: 84,581 votes (48%)
MDP Coalition: 91,986 votes (52%)

Question is, is it an attainable task to get such a drastic swing in the remaining couple of weeks? It is up to the voters to decide! And of course the final assumption is that the voter turn out should also remain equally high as the first round of the elections.