MALE: The man who has ousted Asia’s longest-serving leader in the Maldives’ first democratic elections is a 41-year-old former political prisoner hailed by supporters as the islands’ own Nelson Mandela.

With a simple promise to change, Mohamed ‘Anni’ Nasheed forced a run-off of the country’s maiden democratic vote earlier this month with incumbent Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, 71, and beat him in Tuesday’s run-off, officials said.

He said beating Gayoom, who had run the islands unchallenged for 30 years before allowing a democratic vote, would simply be the “icing on the cake.”

“We can’t lose, in fact, we have already won, whatever the result may be,” Nasheed told AFP, referring to his Maldivian Democratic Party’s campaign for reform, which brought about this month’s presidential vote.

“If the result is favourable to me, it will just be the icing on the cake,” added the one-time Amnesty International ‘prisoner of conscience’ who was held for three years at the Gaamadu prison by Gayoom in the early 1990s.

With revenge dealt out at the ballot box, Nasheed said his priority now was for “a smooth transition of power.”

Under election laws, he must be inaugurated and assume office by November 11. That will formally end 30 years of rule by Gayoom, who did not allow political parties till 2005.

Educated in Sri Lanka and Britain, Nasheed, a father of two young daughters with a degree in maritime engineering, ended his self-imposed exile in London and returned home after Gayoom allowed political parties to be formed for the first time in 2005.

Nasheed said he had been in and out of jail for a period of six years – three of them consecutively – but built the pro-democracy movement with local and international support for change.

He painted Gayoom as a sort of Muslim sultan of old, even a dictator, who had given plum government jobs to his family.

Nasheed said his main task would be to sell off state trading enterprises, cut down the size of the cabinet from 20 to 12 and turn the $62 million Gayoom-built presidential palace into the first university of the Maldives.

He said he was inheriting a virtually bankrupt nation and would seek international aid to the tune of $300 million immediately to stabilise an economy dependent on fisheries and tourism and ensure social order.

Role for Gayoom

Nasheed says that despite being arrested, tortured and jailed by the Gayoom administration, he believes the elder politician may still be able to play a role.

“This is not the end of the political career of Gayoom,” Nasheed said. “We should not be vindictive, but allow pluralism to flourish in the Maldives.”

He wants to hold the country’s first multi-party parliamentary elections in February.

International human rights groups and the European Union have been nudging Gayoom to allow more democratic freedoms after unprecedented street riots broke out here in 2003 when a prisoner was killed while in custody.

The violence in this traditionally peaceful archipelago jolted Gayoom to agree to reforms.

Defeated presidential candidate Ibrahim Ismail of the Liberal Party said Nasheed will have his work cut out for him.

“The expectations are very high,” Ismail told AFP. “It will be a big responsibility to deliver on the reforms he has promised. Otherwise, there could be street protests daily. I look at the outcome with a deep sense of satisfaction,” Ismail said.

“Anni (Nasheed) has a lot of challenges in the coming months. It is tough times ahead for him.”—AFP