The Maldives government led by pro-China leader Mohamed Muizzu will soon “settle down” and its foreign policies and relations with India will go back to “business as usual,” said former President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed on March 8, 2024.
Nasheed who is currently in India and met PM Narendra Modi a day before, also voiced significant concerns regarding the ramifications of the Boycott Maldives campaign by Indians. The boycott was launched after some Maldivian lawmakers made derogatory comments about PM Modi when he visited Lakshadweep Islands.
The former president highlighted the impact of the boycott on Maldives stating, “it has impacted Maldives a lot and I am actually here in India. I am very worried about this. I want to say that people in Maldives are sorry, we are sorry that this happened. We want Indian people to come on their holidays to Maldives and there will be no change in hospitality.”
Reflecting on historical tires, Nasheed underscored India’s responsible approach during the past challenges stating, “When the president of the Maldives wanted Indian military personnel to leave, you know what India did? They did not twist our arms, they did not display muscles, but told the Maldivian government to discuss. That is the action of superpower. It isn’t a bully.”
India-Maldives ties have suffered a setback ever since Mohamed Muizzu came to power in November 2023, Hours after he took the oath, he vowed to ensure Maldives sovereignty and one of the first task he undertook was to demand India to remove its troops from the island nation. He also broke the tradition and decided to leave for Beijing on his maiden foreign trip instead of New Delhi.
The opposition in Maldives has repeatedly hit back at Muizzu for his anti-India stance and has slammed him for pivoting the nation’s foreign policy towards China. Asserting that India-Maldives relations is people-based ad not government centric. Nasheed said “India and the Maldives have similarities in culture, the relation is people to people and not government centric.”
“In South Asia, this happens a lot, when government changes, we swing from one side to another and but I think, that is important that we maintain our relations in a straight line, he added.
“Unfortunately, the current government has inherited anti-India sentiment and that was the rhetoric they used in the elections. However, I believe that once they settle down, they will understand the intricacies of governance, therefore our foreign policies and relations with India would go business as usual,” said Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of Maldives.
On Chinese investments in Maldives, and whether the country is falling under debt trap, Nasheed said, “There are different Chinese entities that have given loans to the Maldives and these were spent on the price of the project, that was very high, it was to the extent that business plans failed and when such plans fail then you cannot pay the loan from the infrastructure.
When we cannot payback the loan, they ask for equity and with equity we lose sovereignty, hence this is very crucial and we have to be mindful of this. We always have to get the best price as we cannot sell our assets at lower prices and can’t do work at higher prices.”
In the last few months, Muizzu has pivoted the island nations policies decidedly in favor of China. Recently, China signed a defense cooperation agreement with Maldives and to provide free military assistance to foster stronger bilateral ties.
Muizzu has announced that Maldives will not renew the agreement with India to conduct hydrographic surveys and plans to acquire the facilities and machines required to do the exercise by itself. He further said that the island nation is working to establish 24×7 monitoring system for Maldives waters and this month to ensure control of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) despite it significantly large area.
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