Canvasopedia

In October 2008, the Maldives held its first multi-party elections, toppling 30-year incumbent Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and replacing him with Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner and according to Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) opposition members, rabble-rouser extraordinaire.

Indeed, this is how members of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and others connected to the party were and still are viewed: as a mob of uneducated activists who took to the streets in undignified protest. But what few people know is that behind the clamour of MDP as well as those who joined their fight was a well-designed plan.

And behind the plan, there was Canvas – an organisation of trainers and consultants that travel the globe to transfer their skills, knowledge and principles of non-violent struggle. The ideas exported by Canvas were born out of Otpor, a youth movement in Serbia, which has been credited with the bloodless revolution that brought down Slobodan Milosovic.

“Maldives was fourth in line of our successes,” says Srdja Popovic, the executive director of Canvas. “Others include the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia.” In the latter, students offered soldiers roses when the army was deployed by Eduard Shevardnadze, who had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years.

Learning the basics

In 2006, Canvas travelled to the subcontinent to hold three training sessions on non-violent resistance: one in Male’, one in Addu and one in Colombo. The aim was to arm MDP activists as well as members of civil society with a set of tools that could be used to overthrow government using non-violent methods. Around 20 people attended each of these sessions, some of whom, says Popovic, are now in government.

The three main principles espoused by the theory of non-violent struggle are unity, planning and discipline. “What we normally do in our workshops,” says Popovic, “is to equip people to help them achieve their vision of tomorrow.” But, he is quick to add that this vision is “home-grown” and not exported.

At the heart of Canvas’ schooling is the dissection of power and obedience. Power structures must be weakened and obedience converted into disobedience. The theory of non-violent struggle, says Popovic, “is that no ruler can do without the consent of the people and if people don’t obey, then the ruler can’t rule.”

Pillars

Imran Zahir, an MDP activist who was jailed seven times under the former president’s regime, said that before receiving Canvas training, activists were just “doing this and that...but we didn’t know what to do.”

One of the training exercises involved the identification of the pillars which support a regime. Generally, these include police and military, bureaucracy, the education system, organised religion, media and business institutions.

The goal of non-violent struggle is to extract as many of the pillars from the regime by eroding their loyalty or by persuading them to deny their skills, knowledge, materials or resources to those in power. “If you undermine these pillars,” says Popovic, “the building will collapse.”

The key to destabilising these pillars, adds Imran, is to “pull” rather than “push” people. Although it may seem self-evident, pushing consolidates a person’s allegiance to a regime. This, he says, is one of the main lessons activists learnt. Further, once the power structures within the Maldives had been analysed, "it took weeks" to bring the system down.

Planning

Crafting a strategic plan is another key element of non-violent struggle. According to Shahinda Ismail from NGO Maldivian Detainee Network, “the importance of planning” was a central part of the instruction. “Until we participated in these trainings,” she says, “we didn’t know how important planning was...To the point of having back-up plans. Before, most of what we did was quite ad hoc.”

Unity, the second mainstay of non-violent struggle, was, says Shahinda, “the whole success” and formed the basis of the United For Change campaign. Following the first round of the presidential elections, when no single candidate obtained more than 50 per cent of the vote, those opposed to Gayoom saw uniting behind Nasheed as their only hope of change.

When Shahinda was asked to join the campaign, her first course of action, she says, was to consult the Canvas manual, Non-violent struggle: 50 crucial points. “Everything I did for the group, I got from the book.” During this time, Canvas held Skype workshops with opposition party members as they tried to mobilise the masses for a rally to display a united front for change.

Mobilisation

Drumming up support is another fundamental component of non-violent struggle, which “relies heavily on numbers,” says Popovic. The strategy is to draw people to the movement with incentives personal to them.

A movement’s “vision of tomorrow” must involve listening to all groups as “people are the stakeholders of change”. Activists must listen to all members of society in order to ascertain where public dissatisfaction lies.

“When developing a vision of tomorrow,” says Popovic, “you need to realise that people will take risks for what is personally most important to them. Only when individuals see how the struggle will benefit them, will they join, he adds. “If you leave people out, you leave voters out.”

Before being schooled in the principles of non-violent struggle, Imran concedes, the movement had one sole aim: to depose Gayoom. “We didn’t know we had to get the votes. But then we realised that even if we did bring Gayoom down, it would be very hard to find legitimacy. We realised we needed to see beyond that.”

Dilemma Actions

A dilemma action is a situation in which any response from the opponent will result in a negative outcome. Nonviolent strategists think of how to create a “lose-lose” framework for the opponent and “win-win” framework for the movement.

Over the last few years, this was put into practice on several occasions. In October 2008, protesters displayed a leaflet-filled coffin as a symbol of custodial deaths. This, says, Popovic, is a perfect example of a dilemma action. If police try to stop people from taking leaflets, they will appear as the aggressors but by failing to take action, the protesters’ message is allowed to reach the public.

In another instance, shortly after Canvas arrived in the Maldives for the first time, a non-violent democracy group, Gaumataka, marked the death of Evan Naseem, who died at the hands of prison guards, by delivering flowers to police and government officials.

At the time, the group said the flowers were “a symbol to urge the police to stop all brutality and to join hands with people to bring about a just and democratic Maldives.”

Although it is unclear to what extent the principles of non-violent struggle have assisted members of the MDP and civil society to create a just and democratic Maldives, “If we contributed anything to your victory, then I am very proud,” says Popovic.

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