One of the most painful, overused cliches of modern times is the saying that insanity is the act of repeating the same action over and over again and expecting different results.
The Maldives, then, can be considered to be suffering from a bizarre national lunacy.
On elections day a little over two months ago, some of us thought we’d finally return to stability. We then also kept our fingers crossed two weeks later – in vain, as it turned out. On October 19, optimistic souls believed Maldivian voters would be a third time lucky. And yesterday, some hoped we would be a fourth time lucky.
And now, some are praying we’ll be a fifth time lucky sometime in the indeterminate future. But as this writer comfortably predicted months ago, there remains a zero percent chance of any free, fair or credible electoral decisions being upheld under the present Maldivian regime.
There is a method in this mad optimism, and it is based on a number of foolish assumptions – the very first being that elections will somehow defuse the two year long crisis. [Read more on Minivan News]
[My piece for Minivan News, published on 10 November 2013]