 and welcome to the US Institute of Peace. My name's Andrew Wilder. I'm the vice president of the Asia Center here at USIP. I'd also like to thank all of you who are joining us virtually today. I'm not sure how, I think most of you are familiar. I certainly hope you're familiar with USIP, but for those of you who are not, we are just about to celebrate our 40th anniversary when we were founded by Congress in 1984 as an independent nonpartisan public institution with a mission to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. It's my honor today to welcome Ambassador Abdul Ghaffar Mohamed who has appointed the Maldives Ambassador to the United States last fall, and he arrived in October a year ago. Before becoming ambassador to the US, Ambassador Ghaffar served in many senior positions at the Maldives Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including as foreign secretary and permanent representative of Maldives to the United Nations. And most importantly, I just reminded him, we were classmates at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and we're meeting again for the first time after 35 years. So it's good to welcome a fellow Fletcherite to USIP. USIP is delighted to host Ambassador Ghaffar for a conversation with USIP visiting expert Nalanti Samaranyaka to discuss the US-Maldives relationship and other political developments in the Maldives. This year has been an important one for US-Maldives relationships as the Maldives reopened its embassy in Washington in June this year, and in July, the US Senate confirmed the first US ambassador to the Maldives. As the US contemplates how best to implement its Indo-Pacific strategy, the Maldives, with its strategic location and relationship to great powers in the region plays an important role. So there's lots to discuss today and I'm sure there'll be a rich discussion and we'll start off by having Nalanti and Ambassador Ghaffar engage a discussion and then we'll open it up for audience questions and a discussion with all of you. So again, thank you all very much for coming today and joining us and with that, my Ambassador Ghaffar and Nalanti to the stage and we'll kick it off with Ambassador Ghaffar making some initial opening remarks. So please welcome to the stage. Ambassador, please. Thank you. First of all, excuse me. Thank you, Andrew, for that very kind introduction. Yes, we were classmates in Fletcher. It's an ear I have always valued and remember very fondly, although it was, I wish it had been two years, but the Fletcher experience is something that has always stayed and it doesn't matter how long you have been away and whenever you meet Fletcher, another Fletcher, Fletcherite, you always feel that sense of kinship and thank you for arranging this event and giving us an opportunity to speak about the Maldives and the US-Maldives relations. I understand you want also to know a little bit more about the Maldives presidential elections that is still ongoing. Excuse me. Before I go into the main topics, let me first give you an introduction about the Maldives background. The Maldives situated about 450 miles southwest of Sri Lanka, comprises of almost 1200 islands of which 200 are inhabited. Well, more accurately now I think it's 186 because some of the islands we're trying to make it lesser. We became independent in 1965 and soon after becoming independent in 1968, the country had a referendum and decided that we would opt to become a republic. So we moved from a certainate to a presidential system of government then. The then prime minister became the president. He served two terms and resigned and said he will not contest the third term. The next president, President Mahmood Abu Gayoom, he became president in 1978 and served for 30 years, six successive presidential terms. By the time I think Maldives had become fatigued about having the same president for so many years and the country changed to a multi-party democracy with the two term limits on presidency. The first multi-party election was held in 2008 and the then government soon was head to, president had to resign after about two and a half years but the next election was in 2013 and the new government came in, President Yamin who was actually the half brother of President Gayoom before. In 2018, we had the third election under the multi-party system. Once again the government changed and now we have the 2024th election and remains to be seen whether the current government, presidents can actually win a second term or will the government be changed in the coming days. When Maldives became independent in 1965, we were one of the poorest countries in the world. We were in LDC, 16 poorest countries but over the years, including through the third year regime of President Gayoom, whatever one criticisms one might have, we did manage to develop quite well and we graduated to a middle-income country in 2011. Nevertheless, we still remain a very vulnerable country. This vulnerability was very much on show in 2004 when we had the tsunami and 60% of our economy was wiped away in a matter of minutes. At the same time, because it's a small economy and because it's also resilient, we are able to come back very quickly and rebuild our economy. When you speak about our economy, our economy is based primarily now on tourism. It is a fairly new industry. It's only 50 years old. The first tourism began arriving in 1972 with very basic infrastructure at the time. In fact, in the 70s when the country looked at the possibility of having a tourism industry, we were told then by international experts that tourism is not a viable industry in the Maldives. It was too small, too isolated, not enough transport communication and no infrastructure, and said that it's not a possible industry. But 50 years later, I think we have one of the world's best tourism industry and celebrated right around the world. In fact, we achieved the leading destination status for successive three years over the last three years. So it's, we learned very early on, you shouldn't always listen to international experts. You should listen to your instincts and carry on and do the work. I really want to speak more conversation and I mean, I can go on talking about my country, but that is not, I wouldn't know whether that would be of interest to you or not. So I would rather be happier to feel questions and respond to the queries you may have about the Maldives. And I'm sure you would have some idea of Maldives having taken an interest to be in this event here. So I would not treat you as being totally ignorant of Maldives. Therefore, I don't think I have to give you a long explanation about Maldives. So with that, I would give the floor to Nelante so you can go ahead. Thank you, Ambassador Gafour. We appreciate you sharing a bit of the history of Maldives and taking us into the contemporary era. The presidential election, that's the most timely aspect of our discussion today. As you mentioned, Maldives has conducted multi-party presidential elections for the past 15 years. We saw a record number of candidates contest in the first round a little over a week ago with a second round coming up at the end of the month. Can you share your thoughts on what observers, particularly here in Washington, should take away from the election process that is unfolding now in Maldives? Thank you. I think the presidential elections this year actually did show certain some interesting statistics. Well, unlike 2018, when we had the two candidates for the presidential election, this time we had eight presidential elections, which is a record. Five of the candidates were from political parties and three were independent candidates. But among the two major parties was the Democratic Party of Maldives, Maldives Democratic Party, MDP, and the PPMP and CHC, just the Progressive Party of Maldives and People's National Congress. They have a joint partnership, those two parties. Then there was the Jumhuri Party, which has usually played a kingmaker role in 2008 and 2012, when we held the election, they were the third largest party. And depending on who they sided with, that side won. So both when President Nasheed won in 2008, he had the support of the Jumhuri Party. And similarly, when President Yamin won in 2013, he had the support of the Jumhuri Party. Usually they have been able to get about 12, 15% of the votes. Under the Maldiven elections, a candidate must have 50% plus one vote to be declared the winner. So in order to get that 50%, no single party has been allowed to, has been able to garner that vote without the support of a third party. This has given rise to a kind of a coalition politics, which is actually not recognized in our constitution, and which is not part of the presidential system. So although it's a presidential system in Maldives, in some characteristics, there are parliament system practices that are being, that you could see. What happens is when, even if they form a coalition, once the president has been elected, he is not duty-bound to keep, to respect the coalition. And the coalition has failed both in 2008 and 2012. But in 2018, when President Solih won with the coalition, he was very keen to show that even under presidential system, he can work with the coalition, that he would respect the coalition arrangements that have been made, even though there is no legal basis to that. And for the past five years, he was governing with the coalition intact, but when the presidential elections came, unlike maybe what he thought his calculations didn't seem to have held, because all these coalition partners decided that they will also contest on their own, which is why we had so many candidates. And at the same time, because of his interest in keeping the coalition together, it also has caused so much, his own party, because a number of certain group people in his own party, they were not all that happy that he was conceding so much to the other coalition partners, and the Maldian Democratic Party has ended up splitting with President Nasheed, one of the most iconic political personalities in the Maldives, leading what came to be known as the Democrats, and President Swally holding on to the MDP. In the elections that held, President Swally was able to achieve 39% of the vote, and to the surprise of many, the opposition party, they run at 46% of the vote. The conventional wisdom had been President Swally would do a lot better than that, but perhaps because of the anti-incumbency factor, or because perhaps MDP was taking things a little bit too much for granted, and as they said after the elections, they were failed in passing people to the electoral booths, and they were not as robust in the push for getting the voters out, they didn't do as well as they had hoped. The Democrats under President Nasheed did surprisingly well, but still not as well as some people might have thought, because being who he is in one might call a giant in modern politics, his party gained 7% of the vote with 15,000 votes, which is the third largest, and yet not that many, when you consider the largest party won 101,000 votes, and President Swally won 85,000 votes, so 15,000 votes is a very distant third, and the party that usually had played the kingmaker role was far behind, he became in fact fifth, with I think about 2,000, 3,000 votes, and in fact an independent candidate doing better than him, getting in the fourth position. So post-election, there has been some just trying to see if anybody who would join the parties, during the two parties, obviously each candidate is keen to garner support of the voters that had turned away from them, but so far they don't seem to have succeeded in getting the smaller parties this time coming on board, the one party has already declared that they will stay neutral. From what is happening last couple of weeks, I would say most of the others would also remain neutral without taking sides. They see that their future in developing their own party depend this time on not joining a party and trying to establish their own identity rather than becoming a small sort of minority party in the larger party. The election is going to be held on 30th of this month, so there's a lot of, as in any election, there's a lot of political pledges being thrown around, I mean each one is sort of promising to take you to the moon and back. And how much these promises can be kept once they come into power remains to be seen. The modern electorate is quite mature. They are used to elections. Even though we may have had a multi-party election since 2008, we have been having elections for a long time. And they have usually, especially since the 2008 elections, the people have made very mature decisions. And they have been very brutal on governments that has not delivered to them. Also I think they are also tired of party politics in the sense of splinter politics and are keen to get more stable form of government, more stable political system. There's currently a debate going on about whether we should have a presidential system or a parliamentary system. President Nasheed has been campaigning very vigorously to try and change the current electoral system to a parliamentary system. But this was a decision that was taken as a role in 2007 before we had the first multi-party elections. And at the time, by a margin of 60, 40 roughly, the people decided for a presidential system. But the argument, the Democrats, led by President Nasheed is making is that it's been 16 years, the experience has not been all that good under the presidential system of governance and the Moldavian electorate, given the country's history and geography and makeup. It's more, it'll be much more feasible to have a parliamentary system, whether his views will be shared by a majority right now. Like last time, remains to be seen. They've asked for an election award on this referendum on this issue in between the two elections, now before 30th of September, which obviously most people have said is impossible. And I don't see this happening, but perhaps in the months to come, there may very possibly be a referendum on whether we should continue with a presidential system or a parliamentary system. One other thing I'd like to also emphasize is our electoral, elections commission and election vote counting. I think we have a very robust and strong elections commission. Quite independent, and it is very difficult in my view to rig the election in the Maldives, despite what the losers might say, because our elections, the vote counting, voting is done in all over the place in very small electoral booths. Like last time, we had 574 electoral boxes. And each of these boxes is counted at the place where the votes are cast. And it is counted in front of representatives from both parties as well as election observers. And the result is announced then and there. So consequently, the election results are known in about three, four hours. I mean, this time in, by about 8.39, it was quite obvious where the trend was going. And by 9.10 o'clock, one could declare who had won the election. So that is election rigging is something that I personally don't think is possible in the Maldives. Even if you play around with that, you couldn't play with more than one or two percent. And if the difference between the two candidates is more than two, three percent, then I think the election results would remain valid, I think that I will. Yes, thank you, Ambassador, for taking us through your detailed assessment of the considerations and the procedural issues, and especially with this discussion about the presidential system versus the parliamentary system. I think all of us are going to be watching on September 30th to see the results of the second round. I want to ask about India and China. This was a topic that was a prominent feature of the discussion throughout the campaign in the election. And more broadly, Maldives is a smaller-sized country that has to manage these very large powers in the region as it tries to conduct its own foreign policy. So can you share your thoughts about how Maldives approaches this geopolitical dynamic as it conducts its foreign policy? Yeah, this question increasingly being asked. The Maldives has always had a very close relationship with both India and China. I mean, China has been a development partner of the Maldives since our independence. In fact, Taiwan was one of the first countries, Republic of China then, to have a resident ambassador in the Maldives before it became Taiwan and China. Republic of China had the first resident ambassador. India, obviously, we have historical links over centuries. And even after independence, the relationship between Maldives and India has constantly become closer. It started becoming much more closer following 1988. In November 1988, there was an incident where mercenaries tried to pull the government. At the time, the government asked for help from India and Indian assistance. With the Indian assistance, we were able to, the government was able to port this. That gave way to a very robust defense cooperation between the two countries. And India Maldives' defense cooperation has been sort of developing since then, very closely. Chinese interest and Chinese activities in the Maldives has been usually in the social sector. They had the first housing development projects in the Maldives, done with the Chinese assistance. They also had in the 90s some small solar projects. So interaction with China and India, Maldives is quite used to that. And it has never been an issue for the Maldives. Perhaps until very recently, when some political personalities try to make this into an issue. This became more pronounced during the time of President Yamin when he was able to gain funds from the Chinese to build the bridge between Malay and Hulmalay. That obviously sort of stood out. Also, he was able to gain a lot of financial assistance from the Chinese for other infrastructure projects as well. Now, this was a time India government and the world government had, or the President Yamin's government had some issues with the Indian government. Mainly because the India being a common world country and being a democratic, inclined state was more prone towards making a statement about Maldives situation at the time because there were a lot of issues being raised internationally about human rights issues at the time. And the jailing imprisonment of President Nasheed by President Yamin's government. These kind of gave impression that China was playing a much larger role in modern politics and India was being sidelined. But even President Yamin had a very strong Indian force policy. And the difference was he was unhappy about the Indian government at the time, sometimes making statements about the human rights situation in the country. And during President's whole time, the role has reversed a little bit. But once again, the relationship with China continues. None of the Chinese projects has been stopped. Chinese companies continue to win projects in the Maldives. But Indian presence has increased under presence only. In the sense, the Indian funding, a line of credit over 1.1 billion per month being made available to the country through which there is another greater Mali connectivity project which gives rise to a building of a bridge and other infrastructure projects. The interaction between India and Maldives is much more pronounced, much more robustly seen, has been seen during the last five years. But I would also like to point out that the India first policy that is being pursued by the government, successive governments in fact, is not the same as an India-only policy. India first does not mean India-only. It means, from my understanding, India first means that we would be cognizant of India's interests in the region, in the Indo-Pacific, when we pursue our foreign policy interests as well. So we would not want to come into conflict with India when we pursue foreign policy. But at the same time, we have also pursued very close relations with other countries, including EU, including UK, US, even China. And right now, we have established diplomatic relations with over 180 countries. Our policy is based on friendship with all. Being a small country, we cannot afford to have enemies. We want everyone to be friends. We want to be friends with everyone, and especially large, powerful neighbors. India is a powerful neighbor next door, and we wouldn't want to be unfriendly with them. It's obviously a lot more helpful to us to have India as a friend than India as an enemy. Similarly, we wouldn't want China to be our enemy or to have unfriendly relations with China. It is to our advantage to have China as a partner, as a friend. And we believe, despite this issue being exploited by certain political figures for their domestic politics, which is a bit unsavory and not quite right, I believe, that the larger picture is that our relations with both countries are quite good. Thank you for sharing that. I think this topic of how Maldives pursues its foreign policy with India, China, and various other powers, and like you mentioned, the EU as well, I think that's a topic that observers are going to continue to be watching with regard to how Maldives does it. I want to take some questions from the audience, but before we do that, Maldives-U.S. relations. The past year has been, it's really seen an uptick in this bilateral relationship. You have recently helped to reestablish Maldives embassy here in Washington. The U.S. has also dispatched its first ever resident ambassador to Maldives. Can you share your thoughts on these developments? What do they all mean? Well, the Maldives has already recognized U.S. as the most powerful country in the world, and it's important to have U.S. on your side. Soon after gaining independence in 1965, when we joined the U.N., there were questions raised about the viability of having such small states as U.N. members, and in fact, we ended up being approved, becoming a member, and that opened the way for other small states to join the U.N. So once you have accepted Maldives into the U.N., there was no way you could not take in all the Caribbean or South Pacific states when they became independent, and currently, I think, almost a third, if not more, of U.N. membership comprised of small states like the Maldives. Even at the time, we recognized the importance of U.S. to be a friend. This is why I think the Maldives became independent. They opened up their first embassy in the U.S., first president embassy. We always had a representative office in Sri Lanka, so that automatically became the Maldives embassy in Sri Lanka. But in 1968, Washington was the first embassy that Maldives built up in. Very far away, very expensive for a small country, and proven right, we couldn't sustain that. And we covered U.N. from Washington at the time. And later on, as we said, we could not sustain that. Once again, in 2007, we tried to establish a resident embassy in the Maldives. This coincided with a very politically sort of happening time in the Maldives, 2008 for the multi-party elections, and when the new government came, and also along with it came the economic crisis, the 2008 economic crisis. The government felt we didn't have the resources to have embassies so far away, and that we could cover, once again, Washington from U.N. And as it turned out, I was appointed as PR to U.N. and covered Washington from New York from 2009 to 2012. The U.S.-Maldives relations has always been on good terms, and we have never had issues with the U.S. The values that two countries have been similar, commitment to democracy, human rights, and U.S. has been very supportive always of Maldives' democratic journey from the beginning. Some of the more things that come to mind, the U.S. support for Maldives, like when we had the 2004 tsunami, and we were devastated. The U.S. was quick to send President Bush and Clinton then to the Maldives, and they acted as ambassadors for Maldives in trying to revive the Maldives tourism industry. As they said, if you want to help Maldives go there, travel to the Maldives, and that was the best tourism promotion we could have. In the last few years, Maldives' engagement with the U.S. has increased especially since this government came in, and it has coincided with the U.S. interest in the Indo-Pacific as well, which has been to our advantage. We welcome the very keen interest that the U.S. is taking in the region and subsequently in the Maldives as well. We have a number of projects in the Maldives that are being assisted by the U.S. in terms of the inter-simplastic wastage, climate change, renewable energy, and also in helping to strengthen our democratic governance and transparency in financial, government finances. All these things lay the basis which will strengthen our democracy and our institutions. In monetary terms, I think what used to be about three to four million dollars' assistance from the U.S. aid has increased to a commitment of over 50 million, I believe, through the signing of DOAG's last couple of years. We saw this becoming more concrete last year with the opening of our embassy in Washington here. It was encouraged and assisted by very much the Secretary of State, the U.S. government. We welcomed the U.S. commitment, U.S. announcement to open its resident embassy in the Maldives when Secretary Pompeo visited in 2019 to 2020, just before the COVID. And now, just a few days back, we have had the first resident ambassador present his credentials to the president. The official opening of the U.S. embassy is yet to happen, but it's already functioning anyway, so the formal official opening will happen quite soon. So I think all these things represent a growing interest to forge closer relations between the two countries. It's something that is very much welcomed by the Maldian government. Thank you, Ambassador. We'll now take some questions from the audience. So, Professor Olapali. Thank you, Ambassador, for that overview. On U.S., just to continue on U.S.-Maldives relations, despite the recent activism, I think you can say, it's fair to say U.S. has been a relatively late-comer to Maldives. And in many ways, it seems to me that a lot of the U.S.-Indo-Pacific strategy is what is driving relations with Maldives, and in turn that U.S. relies a bit on India as one of the key players for its success in the Indo-Pacific. Now, in that case, you know, we do see, you kind of alluded to this, but there is some hypernationalism that tends to be directed mostly toward India, not toward China or not toward any other countries of India, which is important. And secondly, at the same time, we see a deteriorating U.S.-China relations. So you do have these equations going on, and I wonder how whoever comes into power at Maldives, how do you think they'll be able to handle this, and what are the implications? Thank you. I know, should I be speculating? But yes, you said U.S. is a late-comer. I think U.S. physical presence in the Maldives has been late, but U.S. has always covered Maldives quite closely from Colombo. The embassy in Colombo has been quarrelling Maldives, and Maldives' U.S. relations and interaction has always been quite frequent. There have been talks. The ambassadors visit the Maldives quite often, and when our ministers travel to U.N., they often travel on to Washington and have discussions and talks with state departments. We have had other senior U.S. figures visit the Maldives. But yes, you're right. There has been a more intense and more frequent interaction with the U.S. over the last few years with the interest in the Indo-Pacific. That is, I suppose, quite expected. The relations with China, India, and U.S. I think for an outsider to view this from an academic point of view can be quite interesting to analyze and have all kinds of theories. But for Maldivians, for any Maldives government, as I've said before, we can't afford to annoy any one of them. We can't afford to be not friendly with U.S. or China or India. We need to be friends with all of them. And I think it's also something that they also understand. We are a small country, whatever its strategic location, something that is not lost on us and that is always emphasized by the larger powers. So what we do and how we behave of foreign policy is closely watched by the powers. What we want to see in the Indian Ocean is a peaceful, stable Indian Ocean. Unless we have a peaceful, stable Indian Ocean, then it would be the first to be affected negatively by that. We depend on tourism and friendship, hospitality. So unless we have a stable Indian Ocean, a peaceful Indian Ocean, we would not be able to have a robust tourism industry. And China is not one of the largest tourism markets. India is our largest tourism market. U.S., you might not believe, is the 7th largest market for Maldives. I was surprised. It was the 6th in 2022 and currently it's the 7th. And there is a possibility of this growing further. So despite what might be happening locally, and some people trying to play the India-China card, I don't think any government would fall into that. That would be something that will be always happening as kind of a side show. But in the larger framework of government policy, the relations with China, relations with India, relations with U.S., this will remain always remain important, and government will be wary of taking any policy position that would affect negatively on its relations with any one of these countries. Am I about to... Thank you. Are there any other questions? Professor Paine. Thank you, Ambassador, for your remarks. I don't mean to keep on harping about the future, but another existential crisis for the Maldives as well as the entire world is climate change. What, from the Maldivian perspective and from the current administration, is the aim for Maldives vis-a-vis climate change, both for it as a nation and throughout the Indian Ocean? What are some of the priorities that partners of the Maldives should give greater emphasis on targeting? Thank you for bringing it up. As you mentioned, climate change is the existential issue for Maldives. Our islands are only about four to five feet above sea level, and these are also very small. So any rise in sea level can impact us very badly, same as the global warming that affects our coral, which then affects the ecological system and our foodstuff for fisheries. These have negative impacts and threaten our survival. In many ways, we are at the forefront of being affected by climate change, and some have often talked about Maldives becoming climate refugees, although this is not something any Maldivian would accept. We do not intend to move from Maldives, and we do not see why we should. We will learn to adapt, and this is what we have been calling on for the international community to address these issues, these are global issues, and it can only be confronted through global action. Commitment to 1.5 degrees, we keep on hoping about that, pushing that forward, although more and more it seems it is unattainable. We are also calling on more emphasis on adaptation measures and help countries like the Maldives to adapt to changing climate environment. It is for this reason we were very happy and welcomed the U.S. coming on board the Paris Accord once again. That is something we felt very strongly. Unless you have countries like U.S., China, India, EU, all these countries on board addressing climate change issues, it would be impossible to move forward to find a solution for this global issue. We are looking forward to the in December, in Dubai, the COP28 in Dubai, where there is the fund that has been recently trying to establish the name of that fund. The loss and damage fund, yes. We hope that this will come into fruition during that time and will help the smaller countries to address the challenges that are forced by climate change measures that are facing, especially the smaller countries, and low-lying islands. Are there any more questions? Yes. Dr. Dan Markey. Thanks, Mr. Ambassador. I understood from your sort of political analysis of the upcoming elections that the India-China issue is in some ways a sideshow or a distraction where it can be used politically to mobilize. But I'd like to better understand what the other issues are that you didn't really get into. You identified the various parties and so on. But what are these elections actually being contested over? Frankly, in so many of the reports here in the United States, the focus really is on the broader strategic map and where the Maldives fits into it. It would be very useful to hear from you what the issues are that Maldivian voters are actually focused on more firmly. Thank you. Thank you. There are a few things that the Maldives has focused on during the last election. One has been the disappointment that they felt with the common. This common came in with high expectations, very high expectations after a very turbulent period. They wanted peace, stability, a clean government, and they wanted to also redress for some of the injustices that happened during the President Yamin's time. So one issue that has been raised time and again is the government's inability to have addressed these issues. When the government came in, one of the first two commissions that they established was the Commission on Asset Recovery, President's Commission on Asset Recovery, and another presidential commission on investigating certain unexplained deaths which had happened during that time. Unfortunately, the work of both of these commissions has not been known to the public. The public is unaware. They have done a lot of work, they have made reports, but the public is not quite satisfied with the work that was done and that they felt that these two commissions have not delivered on the promises President had made at the time. That has been a disappointment. Another is the issue of corruption. One thing that really stands out is the COVID. During the COVID, the government did an excellent job in dealing with the challenges of COVID. A small, import-dependent country, we managed to ride out the COVID without any shortage of food or medicine. We had the borders closed only for about three months and still tried to revive the tourism industry. Following COVID, I think we were one of the fastest-growing economies. So it did quite a good job. But on the other hand, because it was done so well, people didn't really feel that the government had lost three years or two-and-a-half, three years in trying to deliver on the pledges that they made in 2018. So it was very easy for them to say, these are the things you promised, but this has not been delivered. And during the COVID time, there was an incident where people felt certain groups had taken under advantage and had established sort of engaged and co-operative practices. And these issues take an overblown characteristic. So those disappointments remain. And to that, obviously, another issue was the exploiting this China-India and the Indian dependence. The opposition had been trying to portray that the government had become too much or overdependent on India, and Indian influence is way too much. And there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation through social media, but the issue of threat to sovereignty in small countries is a very sensitive issue, the concept of sovereignty, because we like to feel, even though you're small, that we are independent, we are sovereign. And any indication, any kind of allegation that our sovereignty is threatened is going to become very sensitive. Unfortunately, I don't think government has always robustly challenged these very false allegations that have been made because government was quite content that we, our sovereignty, is not threatened. We are not overdependent. India is a friend, a special friend, a partner, but our sovereignty and our independence has always been quite robust. We, if you look at the UN voting patterns, you would see more recent India votes don't always coincide, especially a recent time on the Ukraine. The world has voted very much on its principle of not compromising the territorial integrity of nations. I think India has, what has been abstained on some issues, we have always voted negatively. If we were so much dependent on India, we would have had to vote with India. And India has always respected Maldives independence. But unfortunately, India being a large country, and this is, I think, an experience, something experienced by all of South Asia, especially smaller countries, whatever India does can be very easily be centred by all the smaller countries. It doesn't matter, let's say, when India sneezes, the rest of South Asia gets caught. It's on 90% of the territory, if not more, and resources. This is India in South Asia. So other countries become very miniscule compared to that. And these issues have sometimes been exploited. And I think in this election too, that sovereignty threat. And to a lesser extent the Islam, the threat of Islam being sort of wiped off Maldives. So our religion has been compromised in the country. Maldives has been for 800 years a 100% Muslim country. And this is something very fiercely guarded by Maldivians. The Maldivian identity is very strongly intertwined with being a Muslim. So the Islamic identity and the national identity are one and the same. So when people exploit that issue, that government has not been protecting the Islamic religion, has not been protecting sovereignty, these things can play a part, a small part. But remember in the Maldives, even 5,000 votes can make a difference. In 2018, when President Nasheed lost to President Yameen, the difference was less than 6,000 votes, I believe. So the religious group can command about 5,000 to 6,000 votes. Those who engage in misinformation, disinformation, they can influence 5,000 to 6,000 votes. And that can make a difference. Well, our hour has come to an end, but I would like to thank you, Ambassador Gafour, for speaking to just a range of issues from Maldives' domestic politics to climate change and to, of course, Maldives' U.S. bilateral relations. Thank you for helping to increase our understanding of how Maldives approaches its foreign policy and larger issues in the international space. I'd like to thank my colleague, give a shout-out to Isha Gupta for managing logistics for today's event. And thank you, everyone, for joining. Have a great week. Thank you.