Dr. Abdulla Waheed writes:

The conventional wisdom till August this year was if one had enough 500 rufiyaa notes to distribute on Election Day, one was assured of victory. This doctrine however came for a severe hammering almost overnight with the lukewarm response Qasim Ibrahim received for his presidential bid. All of a sudden one started hearing comments such as, ‘Qasim is a good businessman and philanthropist, but not the type of person we want as president.” Does this herald a paradigm shift from the plutocratic politics of the past decade to party based politics?

He further writes:

Thus in the future we could perhaps expect a reduction in the number of business tycoons getting elected to the Majlis. This of course is merely a theory and needs verification in light of the results of March 2009 General Election.

Read more from Dr. Waheed here