Despite the earlier predictions, Maumoon got first in choosing a running mate. He managed to appoint Thasmeen as his running mate without creating further divisions in his party. This can be seen as a political success for the incumbent president and the presidential candidate of the DRP, Mr. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
One of the major objectives of having a running mate is to overcome the weaknesses in the candidate and attract additional support which would not be gained if the candidate runs alone. Even though we don’t have reliable statistics or polls to suggest that Maumoon gained more popularity by choosing Thasmeen as the running mate, one thing is certain. That is he managed to avoid further divisions in DRP and hence kept his support base strong. The matter of Thasmeen overcoming any weakness on the part of Maumoon can be a question of debate. In my view Thasmeen brings a much more clean political history (no strong allegations of corruption) than many of the Maumoon’s old guards into the presidential bid.
The decision of choosing a running mate was not easy for other candidates. We had seen many delays in announcing the running mate from Qasim and Anni. However Qasim, Hassan and Anni managed to make the announcement during this week.
I think Qasim’s choice was rather surprising for many of us. His running mate Dr. Ahmed Ali Sawad is completely new for the Maldivian political sphere. It seems that one of the major weaknesses of Qasim that Republicans wanted to overcome was Qasim’s lack of formal tertiary education. So they were desperate to find a person with a PhD for Qasim’s running mate, and indeed Dr. Sawad’s PhD will be an added strength to Qasim’s presidential bid. Another objective of the Republican Party was seemed to be choosing a running mate who belongs to Addu thereby to gain more votes from the southern atolls, but I really doubt how much support a man who lived in overseas for more than 16 years will be able to gain even in the atoll he belongs to, let alone the whole country. Moreover in today’s political environment of
Then came the announcement of Dr. Hassan’s running mate. His choices might have been very limited to find a person who shares the same views and ideologies with him and is ready to be a running mate. Dr. Hassan might not have wanted to take any chance by choosing someone who can’t be completely trusted upon. This could be a major reason why he ended up in choosing Dr. Shaheed, his colleague and faithful friend as his running mate. However it doesn’t stop me wondering how much this decision helps him to expand his voter base.
The media has long before tagged Hassan, Shaheed and Jameel as the “New Maldives” trio. They share similar political views. So it doesn’t make a difference for me whether it’s Shaheed who is the presidential candidate and Hassan is his running mate or vice a versa. For me any combination within those 3 will produce the same result. It’s not Hassan’s presidential bid, but it’s the trio’s presidential bid. Anyone who supports Shaheed would support Hassan too in my opinion. So my point is Hassan should choose some one out of the trio if he wants to attract more support and to strengthen his presidential bid.
Finally Anni has made a decision too, after postponing the announcement many times. His choice of Dr. Waheed may make them a good combination for some of us. Anni being a popular MDP activist can really use some help from Dr. Waheed’s political wisdom. However Dr. Waheed does not enjoy anymore the kind of support he used to get from the public before. It seems that voters will demand an explanation about his departure from the reform process twice and about his future plans before putting faith in him again. If Dr. Waheed succeeds in this task, the combination of Anni and Waheed will surely be a tough one to beat.
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