By Alyssa Ayres
From the article:
On Sunday, September 23, the Maldives will hold a national election that has observers concerned about the country’s direction. The “island nation,” an archipelago of around 1,200 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, stands on a major fault line between democracy and authoritarianism.
The country’s president, Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom—often described as a “strongman” or “hard-liner”—has pulled the country backward on the path to democracy. As Human Rights Watch puts it, “Increasingly autocratic measures by the Maldives president…who took office following a disputed election in 2013, are eroding fundamental human rights in the island country, including freedom of association, expression, peaceful assembly, and political participation.”
As important, the Maldives sits at the heart of Indian Ocean geopolitics.
It is often described as a “battleground” for influence between China and India. The Maldives has historically retained close ties with India but in recent years has grown more enmeshed with China as a result of China’s infrastructure financing. Such methods of infrastructure financing have led to a dramatic increase in the national debt, as in other South Asian countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan. As a Center for Global Development in-depth analysis notes, “the country is considered by the World Bank and the [International Monetary Fund] to be at a high risk of debt distress due to its vulnerability to exogenous shocks.”
Read the full article here.