First Multi-Party Election.
Mohamed Nasheed wins the country's first multi-party presidential election, ending 30 years of Gayoom's rule and ushering in a new democratic era. It is a moment watched closely across South Asia.
The 2008 constitution was the product of years of pressure, reform commissions, and the 2003 prison-death scandal that finally forced Gayoom's hand. It enshrined a bill of rights, separated powers, and — for the first time — allowed competitive multi-party elections.
The election that followed in October 2008 was a two-round contest that Gayoom lost to Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner and founder of the Maldivian Democratic Party. The peaceful handover of power — from a sitting president of thirty years to an opposition candidate — was watched carefully across South Asia. Very few comparable transitions in the region had ended so cleanly.
Nasheed's presidency would go on to produce both the underwater cabinet meeting of 2009 and, in early 2012, a forced resignation under circumstances that are still bitterly contested. Maldivian democracy remains young, fragile, and unfinished.
No other citizens in the world in modern times have changed a thirty-year-old regime so peacefully.