:: Dhivehi Observer :: Peoples Press ::

Gayyoom is just a revision of Saddam Hussain

By Concerned graduates from Maldives - Friday, 3rd September 2004

It is another surprise when Gayyoom stated in his interview with BBC, that a few people gathered to demolish his efforts to the constitutional reform. We do not understand how he came to this conclusion. Well, if you compare the Maldives population with China that would be an immaterial amount. According to our knowledge, Maldives population is about 300,000 and 70, 000 live in the capital, Male'. More than 5,000 people participated in the Black Friday demonstration, which is about 10% of the people in Male’. Another problem with Gayyoom’s government right now is labelling the people who participated in the gathering. At first his regime identified them as illegal demolishers. Then he labelled them as his opponents trying to withdraw him from powers. May be to get world’s biggest powers sympathy; later on he has called them as Islamic fundamentalists. It is still unclear of the final labelling of the people participated in this peaceful political gathering. What we know is that the people gathered there were not to withdraw Gayyoom from power nor were they demolishers or fundamentalists. They demanded the release of innocent political prisoners and the resignation of some of the most influential and corrupted ministers of his government. Gayyoom’s government can fool few hundred thousand people, but we do not believe that they can fool the whole world.

In his interview, when he mentioned that nobody is above law in the Maldives, it reminded us a comment made by a foreign journalist. Few years back this journalist said that Gayyoom is a small man with a big mouth. He has proven it right once again. If nobody is above law, being the president, why has he allowed a constitution to pass which clearly says that the president could not be brought to justice? Remind us if any of his friends or family members appeared in any court in the Maldives during his 26 years of power. When Ilyas Ibrahim was caught, he sent him to Singapore. Ilyas was living in Singapore at government cost until he was called by Maumoon. During the recent burning of government buildings, Abbas Ibrahim’s son was a leader. First, NSS tried to remove him from all the videos taken by them. For some reason, later on they decided to send his case to court. But when the court was opened for hearing the lawyer asked to delay his case because his client was abroad for a medical (unknown) treatment. We don’t understand how these suspected people travel abroad so easily where NSS is more powerful than the courts. For an ordinary Maldivian, if there is a court case pending, NSS informs not to travel and the person will be held under custody (house arrest or jail). It is very easy to order or pass a law, but the difficult part is to follow the order or implement the law. So far we have not witnessed the law being implemented equally and fairly among the people of Maldives. Only the ordinary people get caught under the law and people with governments’ blessing have one way or the other way out.

Regarding the call by the illegal opposition abroad to boycott travel to Maldives, government has said that they are trying to destroy the economy. We strongly object the call by opposition but believe that only opponents are not responsible for any economic drawback. This all started when the government was not happy about the political meetings and began to crackdown those peaceful gatherings. We do not understand a single reason why the government should challenge the opponents if it is serious about the reform. If a government does not allow free expression of opinions, such a country could not claim to be a democracy. Maldives government should have thought before banning political gatherings, that the current generation is not novice as our ancestors. This generation of people is well educated and aware of their basic human rights. A government should face them politely and humanly. Through our observation and experience we have found that Maldivians, specially graduated from Middle East, are very reluctant to criticism. This could be a special perception of the Maldivians but we have to learn to tolerate criticism since we are not living in the barbarian era. The government has no right to solely blame anyone for the destruction of the economy having started the violence first and arresting a large number of business community (Buruma Gasim, Ali Abdulla, Shareef and so on) and the opposition.

Another setback to the Maldives to become a democracy is the arrest of democratically elected Parliament Members (MPs). Under the emergency declaration by the president, government has arrested all the opponents in the parliament and everywhere in the country. This is the first time we have heard that a president declared emergency orders in a country when a person uses a knife against an opponent (eyewitnesses say that this person was hired by an influential minister in the government). We have also never seen before, a group of law enforcing body waited so calmly to witness the act of the attacker. The reason why we have elected those members is to emend the current constitution. We can not bear to see those MP’s being arrested under the same constitution. We can not also accept a constitution being passed without the presence of opposition and their debate (constitution will be same as before without the presence of opposition). We request Gayyoom and his government to learn lessons from the past one year or from the history of Maldives and to release all the political prisoners, specially the MPs, for a better constitutional reform.

Gayyoom is just a revision of Saddam Hussain. The difference is Gayyoom cooperates with the international community whereas Saddam failed to do so. Even Saddam showed an above 90 percent support few months before he was toppled. But a large number of Iraqi people celebrated his removal from power. We urge the international community not to listen all what Gayyoom’s government is saying. Send your special envoys and talk to the ordinary people and the prisoners. Help us to get our basic human rights. It is the duty of the World’s biggest powers to spread the democracy all over the world and to provide human rights to each and every human being. We further believe Great Britain has to play a lead role for two reasons. Firstly, Royal Air Force of UK had an Air Base in Maldives and we still have graveyards of your martyrs on our land. Secondly, Maldives is now one of the best holidaying destinations for the Britain. We believe the responsible parties would take necessary actions to calm down the situation in the Maldives and to bring real democracy to the nation.