:: Dhivehi Observer :: Peoples Press ::

To All diplomats

Mohamed Nasheed
May 2004
From Maldives Culture

how to bow, for majlis members - instructions from the president, based on cartoon by Moir, Sydney Morning Herald

Modified from Alan Moir cartoon
Sydney Morning Herald

The Maldivian Democratic Party is a political party functioning in exile, with most of its elected council members on the run, dodging and hiding from the brutal dictatorship of Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom, who has been the president of Maldives for the last 27 years.

In 2001, members of parliament, a former cabinet minister, leading businessmen, academics, feminists and popular sports stars came together to form a political party - the Maldivian Democratic Party.

Their inquiries to the relevant government authorities had revealed that the registration would be merely an administrative formality. However, President Gayyoom determined otherwise.

With blatant disregard of the constitution, Gayyoom refused to register the party, and compounded this illegal act by endorsing it in his rubber stamp parliament.

MDP members have no alternative than to operate outside Maldives if they wish to exercise their fundamental right of freedom of association. The MDP was formally created on 10th November 2003 in Colombo, Sri-Lanka. On 8th January this year the United Kingdom High Commissioner accredited to the Maldives and residing in Colombo, officially met MDP members – an action which recognised the party as a political entity.

Membership of the party is open to all Maldivians, and people can join by using the party website. During the very first few days of the site's launch, the party received more than 250 requests for membership. The government then banned the web site and it is now more difficult for Maldivians to become members. On the 13th February 2004, the party held its first council elections through the Internet and SMS. This was a major step forward, but Gayyoom ordered a major wave of arrests soon after the election. Most elected MDP council members residing in the Maldives were taken in, and the MDP office in Colombo was harassed.

As a response the party has established its International Secretariat in London, and would like to communicate with your offices regarding the situation in the Maldives.

We believe that you will be aware of the fact of the uprising and civil disturbances of September 2003. Since then, Gayyoom’s ways and methods are more exposed to the international community. In his effort to wiggle out of this exposure, Gayyoom, as he has done in the past when confronted with calls for change, has been setting up cosmetic commissions and paying lip service to democratic and legal reform.

Senior Ministers of the regime has been informing foreign diplomats and the international media that the question of legitimising the MDP depends on the constitutional reform process is underway.

During the 1990 Special Majlis committee convened to draft the present constitution, the present MDP spokesman Mohamed Latheef probably worked harder than anyone else. About ten of the fifteen or so committee members were Gayyoom’s cabinet members. Latheef concentrated on one issue – the separation of powers.

In the last committee meeting he attended, Latheef persuaded most of them that separation of powers was not incompatible with Islam – the skirt Gayyoom and his supporters like to hide behind. Within a month, Latheef was in solitary confinement.

Gayyoom’s tailor-made constitution makes him legally the head of the judiciary, the religious head, the controller of the legislature in addition to being the chief executive. This means that the President of Maldives has more power vested in him than in any other head of state including Saddam’s Iraq, Libya, Cuba, North Korea or even in kingdoms like Bhutan or Saudi Arabia. Gayyoom is also the Defense Minister, the Commander-in-Chief of the National Security Services and the Minister of Finance.

In 1995, the late Mohamed Latheef (no relation to MDP spokesman Latheef), who had been a Prime-ministerial hopeful of the 1950s and a cousin to the former Prime Minister Famuladeyri Kilegefaanu, and this writer applied to register a political party.

In response to this, Gayyoom wrote back to us, saying that it would be a timely consideration when the new constitution (the present constitution ratified in 1997) comes into effect. Soon afterwards, he arrested Latheef and many of his close associates, all of them respected elders of Maldivian society. Among them were an historian, the late Hassan Ahamed Manik who then held the Chair for Male' Municipality, Ahamed Shafeeq who has held nearly all Maldives government positions at some time, apart from the office of head of state, and writer Ali Moosa Didi who is the father of Lt. Col. Moosa Jaleel.

I mention the profiles of these people so you will understand the extent of Gayyoom's efforts to resist the idea of meaningful democratic change. Of course, he arrested me as well.

After seventeen years of Gayyoom dragging his feet, the new constitution was finally ratified in 2000. The president’s own nephew, who studied law in the UK and is one of the leading lawyers in the country, said to the Washington Post that the new constitution was a document more draconian than the earlier 1968 constitution it had replaced.

The 1997 constitution did grant freedom of political association, which was also a feature of the constitution it replaced . After being elected to parliament as MP for Male', this writer and 41 others, including four members of parliament, requested registration of the party in 2001.

Now again, Gayyoom is saying that he has to amend the constitution before allowing political pluralism. Haven't we been here before?

The issue of the registration of MDP is not a constitutional issue, and therefore its registration is only an administrative task. This is one stipulation that we have always maintained, and I believe that most Maldivians will back us on this. The present Human Rights commissioner is one of the signatories to the request. He cannot, and I believe will not, now turn around and say that the request is unfounded. We believe that legislation for a registration process is available in the present Maldivian legal frame work.

The constitutional amendment procedure is being initiated by a decree of the President. This decree has not given the scope of the proposed amendments. Even if Presidential utterances are to be taken as decree, his only indication of the scope of the constitutional amendment, has been his words to the effect that 'a new framework of governance is required.' Gayyoom has not elaborated on the statement, and the state controlled TV, radio and print media remain silent on this issue.

Meanwhile, the government is conducting a relentless campaign to discredit the idea of pluralistic democracy, saying that it is un-Islamic and goes against the grains of Maldivian nationalism, and all the rest of it. We have no means to reach the voters other than through clandestine meetings. The MDP website is still banned, as well as all the other sites critical of the government. The MDP newsletter is government-declared subversive material. The home minister has announced that it is illegal to be a member of the party or conduct any party activity.

We therefore seriously doubt if there will be any amendments that may dilute Gayyoom’s hegemony. As such, it is tough to get excited about the hype surrounding constitutional reform. This is Gayyoom's ruse to buy time and placate the international community who now seem to be taking our cry for reform more seriously. Gayyoom will make cosmetic changes, and try harder to hide the strings he attaches to any 'reform' he initiates.

The MDP believes that the amendment of the constitution is not a natural first point of any meaningful reform program. We feel that the Government should act now and legitimise the party, instead of continuing to play a delaying and deceptive game.

We hope that the above points will assist you in your deliberations on the Maldives.