Cleaning up politics

Maturity: Well-established

Scale: Macro-relevant pillar

CIVIC-SCOPE Analysis
Context	Interests
High cost of campaigning bars honest actors and drives "recovery corruption." Clientelism is the norm, with state jobs and projects traded for votes. Voters view the vote as currency to solve immediate personal needs.	Incumbents: Benefit from state resource abuse and patronage networks. Wealthy Elites: Buy influence by funding expensive campaigns. Voters: Rationally trade votes for tangible help (jobs, cash) due to lack of trust in policy. Opposition: Often locked out by financial barriers.
Vision	Incentives
A lower-cost political system where patronage is structurally limited (capped political jobs, scored infrastructure projects). Digital transparency and electoral reform break the "favour economy."	Politicians: Face the "prisoner's dilemma" – they feel that disarming unilaterally means losing; fear of voters. Citizens: Incentivized to sell votes when the state fails to meet their needs reliably regardless.
Challenges (SCOPE)
Structural: The "coattail effect" of election timing; small constituency sizes that facilitate retail vote-buying. Capacity: Enforcement bodies (ACC, Elections Commission) often lack teeth or independence against powerful executives. Operational: Monitoring dark money and informal "voter assistance" transactions; verifying asset declarations. Political: Asking sitting MPs to pass laws that restrict their own survival strategies; intense resistance from party machines. Economic: The "payroll vote" creates a massive long-term fiscal liability (unneeded jobs) that is hard to unwind.
Challenge Score: Budget: 2-3 | Logistics: 3 | Legislative: 5 | Political Capital: 5 | Execution: 4 | Time: 2-3 | Stakeholders: 5 | Risk: 3

Historical Context and Policy Evolution The governance framework of the Maldives was radically overhauled with the ratification of the 2008 Constitution, which established a multi-party democracy, separation of powers, and independent oversight bodies like the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the Auditor General’s Office. Despite these structural reforms, the political culture has been slow to change. Clientelism remains a dominant feature of the political landscape, where public sector jobs and state resources are treated as currency to secure electoral support. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) often function as vehicles for this patronage. Politicians frequently pressure SOEs to hire constituents, leading to redundant staffing and inefficiency. The "cost of politics" in the Maldives is exceptionally high relative to the population size, creating barriers to entry for those without wealthy backers. Vote-buying is illegal but widely reported in election observation missions, driven by the close-knit nature of small constituencies where individual votes hold significant value. The integrity of independent institutions has faced severe stress tests. The MMPRC corruption scandal of 2014-2015, involving the theft of island lease revenues, exposed how easily oversight bodies could be co-opted or sidelined by a powerful executive. Subsequent reforms in 2019 sought to restore the independence of these bodies, empowering the Judicial Service Commission and ACC to hold officials accountable. However, the tension between building robust, neutral institutions and the incentives of survivalist politics remains the central dynamic of Maldivian governance.

[This broadly recaps the Cost of Politics in the Maldives project conducted in partnership with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Align Consultancy.. do we put an intro box at the start of every essay giving context? Idk will think]

The persistence of clientelism in the Maldives – a "favour economy" where votes are traded for jobs, cash, or access – is often dismissed as a cultural inevitability or a moral failing of the electorate. However, a closer examination of the incentives governing our political system suggests it is neither. It is a rational response by ordinary citizens to the mechanics of a state that is frequently slow, opaque, and highly discretionary. For many citizens, the government does not function as a neutral provider of rights and services but as a series of locked doors. Accessing essential entitlements, whether it is a medical referral from Aasandha that actually covers the bill, a loan approval for a small business, or a school transfer for a child, often feels impossible through standard bureaucratic channels.

In this environment, the Member of Parliament functions less as a legislator debating policy and more as a high-powered "fixer" capable of unsticking a frozen bureaucracy. Voters participate in this system not out of moral decay, but out of necessity. They understand from experience that policy promises made on campaign podiums are vague and frequently broken. In contrast, a direct cash transfer of MVR 5,000 to clear a utility debt, or a guaranteed job for a son or daughter in a state-owned enterprise, is a tangible, immediate benefit that solves a real problem. When the state fails to deliver services by rule, the vote becomes the only currency a citizen has to purchase the attention of the state. To clean up politics, we would need to dismantle the machinery that makes this transaction necessary, rather than simply criminalizing the participants attempting to navigate it.

The currency of patronage

While cash handouts during the 24 hours before an election grab headlines – with the "market rate" for a vote consistently settling around MVR 5,000 per head, and rising to MVR 10,000 in high-stakes races – the most pervasive, expensive, and damaging form of vote-buying is the distribution of public sector jobs. This practice turns the state’s own payroll into a campaign war chest. Candidates and experts alike estimate that in many constituencies, between 40 to 100 jobs in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are promised and delivered to secure a seat.

This dynamic creates a massive disparity where the incumbent party can effectively utilize taxpayer resources to campaign against opposition candidates who must rely on private capital. More critically, it creates a staggering long-term fiscal liability. If 50 unnecessary jobs are created per constituency to secure votes, this amounts to an annual payroll liability of roughly MVR 10 million per seat that the taxpayer bears indefinitely. This "payroll vote" distorts the labour market, destroys the efficiency of SOEs, and bloats the public sector with staff hired for political loyalty rather than operational need. It is a form of corruption that mortgage’s the nation’s economic future to pay for its short-term political present.

We could address this by legislating firm ceilings on the number of public roles by institution, type, and rank – specifically including SOEs and political appointments. By formalizing organizational structures and capping the number of staff an entity can hire based on actual operational mandates, we remove these jobs as a currency of patronage. If a politician can credibly say to a constituent, "I cannot give you a job because the legal cap for that department is full," the conversation shifts from patronage to policy. This would require a Public Employment Cap Act that applies strictly across the board, preventing the creation of ad-hoc positions during election cycles.

This logic of discretion extends to infrastructure. Currently, the allocation of development projects is largely discretionary, allowing the executive to reward loyal constituencies and punish opposition ones. This discretion is the oxygen of the favour economy. Candidates campaign on the explicit premise that only an MP aligned with the ruling party can "bring development" to an island. We propose adopting a national priority scoring system for all infrastructure projects. By using explicit, public criteria such as population density, housing needs, and economic potential to score and rank projects, we remove the ambiguity that allows for political manipulation. If a government wants to fund a low-priority project over a high-priority one, they would be required to provide a formal justification to a standing committee of the Majlis. This would not stop political decisions entirely, but it would make the corruption legible to watchdogs and the public, raising the political cost of misallocation.

The financial filter

The necessity of participating in this expensive favour economy creates a secondary, perhaps more insidious effect: it acts as a rigorous financial filter that bars honest actors from entering the legislature. A parliamentary seat offers a remuneration package of MVR 82,500 per month. Over a five-year term, this totals approximately MVR 4.95 million. On paper, this might seem sufficient to finance a campaign. However, the reality of political finance in the Maldives suggests otherwise.

Research into recent election cycles indicates that a successful campaign for a general election seat costs, on average, between MVR 2 million and MVR 5 million. In highly contested constituencies, this figure can balloon to MVR 15 million or more. Even at the conservative end of this spectrum, a candidate is spending the equivalent of nearly eight years of the average Malé household’s income just to secure the job. But the general election is only the second hurdle. The barrier to entry begins much earlier, at the primary stage.

Candidates must first fund a primary campaign entirely out of pocket. Political parties generally do not provide funding for internal contests, meaning this stage is a pure test of personal liquidity or access to wealthy networks. A primary campaign can cost between MVR 200,000 and MVR 500,000. In "safe seats" – where the party ticket is tantamount to victory – the primary becomes the de facto election, with costs reaching up to MVR 4 million as candidates engage in a bidding war. Importantly, candidates who spend millions to lose a primary have no mechanism to recoup these costs; it is a total loss.

Once elected, the financial pressure does not abate; it evolves. MPs report that the expectation of "voter assistance" continues throughout their term. Constituents view the MP as a welfare provider of first resort, requesting assistance with utility bills, medical expenses abroad, school fees, and personal debts. MPs describe this "maintenance cost" as consuming the majority of their monthly salary, leaving little to no funds for their own living expenses or to service the debts incurred during the campaign.

This creates a grim calculus. The combined cost of the primary, the general election, and the monthly "maintenance" of the constituency consistently exceeds the legitimate income of the office. Unless a candidate is independently wealthy – typically a major business owner – they are forced to enter office carrying significant debt or relying on benefactors who expect a return on investment. This return is often paid in the form of influence: lobbying for regulatory changes, intervening in government contracts, or protecting business interests. The system actively selects against those who cannot or will not engage in transactional politics. It creates a legislature where corruption is not an anomaly, but a survival strategy.

Table 1: The financial scale of Maldivian politics

Metric	Estimated Value	Contextual Equivalent
Primary Campaign Cost	MVR 200,000 – 500,000 (up to 4m)	1 to 22 years of median island household income
General Election Cost	MVR 2,000,000 – 5,000,000 (up to 15m)	5 to 28 years of median household income
MP Salary (Total Term)	MVR 4,950,000	Barely covers average campaign costs; leaves zero for living expenses or debt repayment after "voter assistance".
Vote Buying Rate (Cash)	MVR 5,000 – 10,000	2+ weeks of median individual income
Vote Buying (Jobs)	MVR ~200,000/year/job	Recurring taxpayer cost to secure one vote

The digital wedge against influence peddling

If the demand for a political "fixer" stems from the friction of bureaucracy, then a fast, reliable, and unified digital government serves as a critical anti-corruption tool. The current landscape of government services is a fragmented ecosystem of over 220 separate, often incompatible software portals . This inefficiency creates the friction that forces citizens to seek political intervention. When a housing application sits in a black box for months, or a medical claim is stuck in processing, the citizen has no choice but to ask an MP to "look up a row" in a spreadsheet or call a minister to speed up the claim.

Consolidating government digital services under a single authority with the statutory power to enforce data standards and service level agreements (SLAs) would strip discretion from the system. If a citizen can track their housing application or medical claim in real-time on a single, reliable platform – much like tracking a package delivery – the power of the intermediary evaporates. When services are rule-bound and transparent, denial of service cannot be arbitrary. This protects the citizen from neglect and protects the politician from the pressure to intervene, as they can point to the system’s public rules and the visible status of the application as the final arbiter.

This digital transformation must be more than a technical upgrade; it is a political reform. By moving high-risk allocations – such as social housing, SME loans, and NSPA funds – onto transparent digital queues where position and scoring are visible, we remove the dark corners where influence peddling thrives.

Digital systems can narrow the space for fixers and petty corruption by making processes visible and traceable. They cannot clean up politics on their own. Without clear rules, enforcement and a change in expectations, digitalisation can simply move old practices into new channels. That is why this section pairs digital tools with legal and institutional reforms rather than treating them as a magic solution.

Restructuring the electoral market

The structural design of our electoral system actively facilitates retail-level vote buying. Constituencies are based on small population segments, meaning some MPs are elected with fewer than 2,000 votes. In such small pools, it is logistically and financially feasible to buy a winning margin. A candidate can identify exactly which families control which vote blocs and tailor financial packages – paying off a specific loan, buying a boat engine – to secure them. The intimacy of the constituency works against its integrity; because the candidate knows every voter, the transaction becomes personal and enforceable.

We could fundamentally alter this calculus by moving to larger, multi-member constituencies using a system like Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) or Proportional Representation. If a constituency represents an entire atoll or a large administrative region with tens of thousands of voters, the cost of buying a winning margin on a retail basis becomes prohibitive. You cannot buy coffee and pay electricity bills for 15,000 people. Candidates would be forced to campaign on broader issues that appeal to large segments of the population rather than transactional deals with specific families.

Furthermore, the timing of our elections creates a "coattail effect" that distorts parliamentary outcomes. By holding parliamentary elections just months after the presidential election, voters almost overwhelmingly hand a supermajority to the sitting President’s party. They do this out of pragmatism: they know the President controls the executive and the purse strings, so electing an aligned MP is seen as the only way to ensure their island gets development projects. The legislature effectively becomes a rubber stamp for the executive, failing in its duty of oversight.

Synchronizing the Presidential and Parliamentary elections would decouple this dynamic. If voters cast ballots for both branches simultaneously, the uncertainty of the presidential outcome breaks the link between the MP and the executive’s patronage machine. Voters would be forced to assess parliamentary candidates on their own merits and policy platforms, rather than simply voting for the conduit to the President's treasury. This change would reduce the "winner-takes-all" nature of Maldivian politics and encourage a more independent legislature.

Breaking the barriers to entry

The high cost of politics acts as a demographic filter, excluding women, youth, and people with disabilities who rarely have access to the necessary networks of capital. For women, the barrier is often internal to the parties. Despite being the backbone of grassroots organizing, women are systematically frozen out of leadership roles and winnable seats. In the 2024 election, despite women making up half the population, only three women were elected to the 93-member Majlis. This is a gatekeeping problem, exacerbated by intense psychological violence and sexualized slander that male candidates do not face.

While there is often resistance to quotas on the grounds of "merit," we must be honest that the current system does not select for merit; it selects for access to money and a willingness to engage in corruption. Given this reality, temporary legislative quotas for women could serve as a necessary shock to the system to break this cycle. Evidence from countries like Rwanda shows that quotas do not just put women in seats; they change the perception of women’s leadership capabilities over time, eventually making the quotas themselves less necessary. A ranked-choice or proportional system makes the implementation of such quotas mechanically simpler and less contentious than in a First-Past-The-Post system.

For people with disabilities, the political arena is often exploitative. Candidates use disabled individuals for photo opportunities – gifting wheelchairs or devices during campaigns – while parties systematically exclude them from running for office. This tokenism reinforces a dynamic of pity rather than power. Changing this requires internal party democracy reforms that mandate inclusion in committee structures and candidate slates, ensuring that diverse voices are at the table where decisions are made, not just used as props in campaign flyers.

Closing the loopholes

Finally, we could tighten the legal framework that allows vote-buying to masquerade as charity. Currently, the law prohibits bribery, but enforcement is non-existent because the transactions are framed as "voter assistance" or "goodwill". Candidates openly pay for medical trips or clear debts, falling into a legal grey zone where the intent is understood but technically deniable.

We propose amending the Elections Act to explicitly criminalize any undocumented transfer of funds or material goods to a voter during the campaign window, regardless of the stated intent. Furthermore, liability could be extended to the voter who accepts these funds. While we recognize that enforcement will be challenging, establishing this legal clarity serves a crucial normative function: it signals that this transaction is not a "gift," but a crime against the democratic process.

This legal shift could be paired with a pre-election "freeze" period – perhaps two months prior to polling – where the government is barred from announcing new major projects or inaugurating infrastructure. This stops the incumbent from using the state apparatus as a taxpayer-funded campaign machine, leveling the playing field for challengers who cannot command the resources of the state.

The cynicism surrounding Maldivian politics is deep, but it is not insurmountable. Voters and candidates alike expressed to us a feeling of being trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma: they want to stop the vote-buying, but they cannot unilaterally disarm without losing. The reforms outlined here are designed to break that dilemma by changing the rules for everyone simultaneously. By capping jobs, scoring projects, digitizing services, and reforming the electoral map, we can lower the cost of politics and build a state that earns trust through delivery, not purchase it through favours.

Box: Expert views on cleaner politics

Kanti W Janis Former Presidium, Women’s Caucus, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, Indonesia & Founder of Baca di Tebet Libraries International Expert Text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Fuwad Thowfeek Former Head of Elections Commission, Maldives Local Expert Text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text Aryj Hussain Country Director for Maldives, Westminster Foundation for Democracy Local Expert Text text Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text Text text text text text text text text text text text