Author: JJ Robinson

The sunny side of life

Adopting proven sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar will reduce both the price of electricity in the Maldives and cut down on price fluctuations caused by the expensive importation of fossil fuels, claims Danny Kennedy.

He would know. The former Greenpeace campaigner turned solar power entrepreneur is riding a surge of interest in the renewable technology, spurred by economic rather than environmental imperatives.

“The solar industry grew 40 percent during the recession,” he tells Minivan News.

“The average price in the US is now US$0.24 a kilowatt, which makes solar power already a third cheaper than grid electricity in the Maldives.”

The Australian environmental campaigner ran Greenpeace campaigns across the Pacific in places such as Papa New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, prior to moving to the United States and founding Sungevity, the residential solar company that is now the third largest such provider in the country after just a few years in operation.

Kennedy is in town to oversee the pro-bono installation of 48 photovoltaic (PV) modules on the roof of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s house, ‘Muleaage’, which convert solar radiation into direct current electricity using photovoltaic semiconductors.

Nasheed has already agreed to personally help install the units, which Kennedy expects will save the country US$300,000 in electricity over the 25-year warrantied lifespan of the units.

Sungevity calculated the solar production potential of Nasheed’s roof from its office in Oakland California, using aerial images from Microsoft’s mapping software.

The method uses a fiendishly clever piece of trigonometry developed by a young student from Sydney Grammar School in Australia, that takes the altitude of the photographing plane from the image’s metadata then uses trigonometry to calculate the angle and direction of the potential customer’s roof, and then plugs in known quantities such as the area’s solar potential and price of electricity.

The result is that customers can determine the amount of electricity the unit will generate and potential savings, over the internet, “with plus or minus one percent margin of error. That’s better than sending a kid onto the roof with a tape measure, which introduces human error.”

The schoolboy’s innovation stunned the Redmond heavyweight sent over to Sungevity from Microsoft to see how the software worked, who told Kennedy that the company couldn’t have done such a thing “with 300 of our own engineers.”

Installing the units on Nasheed’s roof is now the last phase of the operation.

“We installed the rails today, and we’ll install the PV modules over the next few days. There are still some conduits to install to the generating room, and some carpentry to do,” Kennedy explains.

As the President’s house is connected to the grid in Male’, the solar cells will feed electricity back into the grid and help power the city when Nasheed is not running the air conditioning or using the microwave.

“My sense is that he’s trying to do something symbolic and make a statement about solutions to climate change,” Kennedy said. “He seems to be trying to lead by example.”

Founder of Sungevity Danny Kennedy suggests the Maldives can develop and export its expertise in renewable energy

The light stuff

The driving force behind solar power is now economic, says Kennedy.

While the capital expenditure for a small unit runs to US$30,000, installations in countries like the US are heavily incentivised and banks are increasingly offering ‘solar financing’ so customers can avoid the upfront hit.

“Solar is now about saving money,” Kennedy says. “The US and Australia give cashback on solar installations, while in the EU the model is a feed-in tariff. In Germany the model pays 40 euro cents per kilowatt hour, so if you install a solar system with a 20 year lifespan, you can sit back and let the thing turn a profit.”

As a result, “Germany‘s projected installation this year is 7000 megawatts – by comparison, Male’s powerplant generates 38.76 megawatts.”

The UK is not far behind Germany, with a proposed 31 pence feed-in tariff: “The UK solar market is going to go gangbusters in the next few years,” Kennedy says.

Feed-in tariffs are the fastest way to promote quick adoption of the technology, Kennedy explains, but incentive models – cashback and feed-in tariffs – “take on the vested interests involved in fossil fuels.”

“The Maldives can move to clean fuel, hedging against fuel price rises while taking on the vested interests of incumbent technology,” Kennedy suggests.

The flat and predictable cost of solar power contrasts with that of fossil fuels, he says, which are expensive for a country like the Maldives to import, subject to price flucutations, and vulnerable to Middle Eastern instability.

“While a small system may cost up to $30,000, it will pay itself back tenfold over its lifespan. It’s a safe and predictable return on investment,” he says.

In the US at least, the price of grid electricity is rising by seven percent per annum, Kennedy explains. The cost of solar units is meanwhile plummeting as production of the devices, led by China, skyrockets.

“Every doubling in production of PV modules represents an 18 percent reduction in price,” Kennedy explains.

“The Chinese have noticed this are increasing production massively, and have doubled production twice in the last three years. There has been a 50 percent drop in price in the last 18 months.”

A country like the Maldives with comparatively low energy requirements has the potential to meet much of its energy demands through a combination of solar, wind and wet (tidal) renewable energy generation, Kennedy suggests, as well as create a great many jobs in the sector.

And if the German experience is anything to go by, that expertise is soon going to be in high demand across the world.

“German companies like Bosch said early on that they are going to become better at this that anyone else, and manage the IP (intellectual property). Now, it’s German engineering staff who are running the Chinese production lines.”

The Maldives could develop its own expertise, Kennedy suggests: “the challenges of powering an isolated island in the Maldives are similar to those of a town in the Australian outback,” he notes.

Kennedy sees the future of power generation as working rather like the internet, running as a grid with many small generators feeding into the system rather than the centralised production and distribution of power.

“I’m not a great advocate of large-scale power plant development, solar or otherwise,” Kennedy says. “It risks replicating the mistakes of the past – it’s a Faustian bargain you make, as with Edison: ‘Give us lights in the streets and we’ll give you a regulated monopoly.’”

Because of the pollution profile, plants are also located further from population centres and up to 30 percent of electricity generated is lost in transmission.

“There are new high-voltage DC lines becoming available but uptake is not substantial,” Kennedy says, predicting a future where power generation is controlled by the consumer and with less wasteful transmission.

“Who pays for that bit in lost in the middle?” he asks: “The public purse.”

With 50 percent of the world’s solar installations in Germany, weather is no longer as great a limiting factor of solar technology either, Kennedy says.

The principle obstacle has rather been one of “political will” – which Nasheed will demonstrate when he clambers onto his roof over the next few days to poses for photos with his new PV cells. Clearly a publicity stunt – but nonetheless a bright idea.

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British woman who died at Kuredhoo “a strong swimmer”, say parents

The 42 year-old British woman whose body was found on the shore of Kuredhoo Island Resort has been identified as Sharon Duval from the village of Kidlington in Oxfordshire, UK.

The Oxford Mail reported that Duval died while on honeymoon with her husband Nick Duval. The pair were married last year and together ran the Highwayman pub in Kidlington.

Duval’s parents John and Pauline Stockford told the Oxford Mail that they did not know if she died “because of some sort of crime or an accident, and we will wait to hear the results of the postmortem.”

The pair told the Oxford Mail that they had not spoken to their daughter, who has a 16-year-old son, for 10 years after a family row.

“You can’t turn the clock back. We were both in tears when we found out and sat down and tried to talk it through,” they told the paper.

“Sharon was a very strong swimmer when she was a pupil, so it is surprising to hear that she died in these circumstances.

“The whole of Kidlington will be shocked by this – people still call it a village and it’s very close-knit.”

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam today told Minivan News that Duval had been observed drinking at the resort’s bar until late in the evening prior to her death, in the company of another individual.

“There is no sign of physical abuse or injury to the body, and at this point there is no evidence of any suspicious activity,” Shiyam said, “however are still taking the investigation very seriously.”

The resort yesterday declined to issue a statement to the media regarding Duvel’s death, however three staff members told Minivan News that the 42-year-old’s body was found on the seashore just after midnight on Friday evening, at approximately 12:30am.

The BBC has meanwhile reported that the UK Foreign Office is “urgently investigating” the death.

Duval is the second British national to die recently in the Maldives while on holiday. In early September top transplant and vascular surgeon Ali Bakran was pulled from the water and pronounced dead at Adaaran Meedhupparu Resort in Raa Atoll.

Police said that while the cause of death was “most likely” drowning, “it is very difficult to confirm without a postmortem, and that is not something we can do here [in the Maldives].”

The 61 year-old surgeon at Liverpool Hospital was on holiday with his wife Diane and daughter Miriam.

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Maldives takes on UK in high seas legal drama

The Maldives government looks set to lock horns with the UK Foreign Office over the Maldives’ long-running claim to 160,000 square kilometres of British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

The Maldives wants an extension of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which impedes on a 200 nautical mile EEZ that the UK claims extends from the island of Diego Garcia.

The island is presently occupied by a US naval base, under an agreement in 1966 whereby the UK received favours including a US$14 million discount on submarine-launched Polaris missiles in exchange for use of the island until 2016. The base is now among the largest US naval bases outside the country, and has reportedly been used as a stop-off point for the CIA’s highly-controversial ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights to Morocco and Guantanamo Bay.

More recently, the UK has declared the Chagos Archipelago in the BIOT a marine reserve – an area larger than France – theoretically making it the world’s largest marine protected area (MPA). Funds to manage the MPA for the next five years have been provided by Swiss-Italian billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.

The matter is further complicated by the existence of an indigenous population, the Chagos, who were forcibly evicted after the British bought the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius for £3 million (US$476,000) in 1965. The then-Mauritian Prime Minister Seewoosagur Ramgoolam subsequently received a knighthood that same year.

The British attempted to resettle 1000-odd Chagos in the Seychelles and Mauritius, which demanded an additional £650,000 (US$1 million) to settle the refugees.

The Chagos were known to Maldivians in the southern atoll of Addu, as they occasionally rescued a stranded fishermen who had strayed too far south and sent him home. The islands themselves were never settled by the Maldivians, although they retained the Dhivehi name of Feyhandheebu.

Dispossession and the courtroom

The Chagos won a high court victory in the UK in 2000 enabling them to return to archipeligo, but the decision was extraordinarily overruled by the Queen’s royal prerogative. In 2008 the House of Lords overturned the high court verdict, forcing the Chagos to appeal in the European court of human rights.

The Maldives contends that as the islands are uninhabited, according to the Law of the Sea Convention the UK had no right to claim a 200 nautical mile EEZ.

“We will send a delegation to the UN in February and the UN will question us as to our claim, which we believe we have according to the Law of the Sea Convention,” said State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ahmed Naseem.

“Sri Lanka has also filed claims, and we need clarification of them,” he added.

The Maldives’ interest in the area extends to fishing and potential exploitation of mineral resources, Naseem explained.

“We are saying that since there is no population benefiting from the area, the British government cannot claim it as their territory. We feel the [original] claim made by the British is not legally valid [under the Law of the Sea Convention],” Naseem said.

Were the Maldives – or any other country – to succeed in its claim, it would be indirectly benefiting from the homelessness of the Chagos by claiming the territory from which they were forcibly evicted.

“That’s not our issue – the fact of the matter is that there is no native population on the island,” Naseem explained.

On Tuesday the Chagos community in the UK, who live in Crawley next to their arrival point of Gatwick airport, expressed surprise at the UK Foreign Office’s apparent opposition to the Maldives’ claims on their homeland.

In an interview with the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Roch Evenor, chairman of the UK Chagos Support Association, said the Foreign Office “seems to be more interested in defending the seabed than the interests of Chagossians. Why did [politicians] give us all that sweet-talking before the elections and then afterwards we are back to square zero? We feel emotionally drained.”

Second Secretary at the British High Commission in Colombo, Dominic Williams, insisted on Wednesday that the UK was not protesting the submission by the Maldives to extend its territorial waters, but was rather making “an observation” to the UN’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

“The UK observed that the Maldives’ submission had not taken into full account the 200 nautical mile Fisheries and Environment Zones of the British Indian Ocean Territory,” he said. “We are satisfied that the CLCS will be able to consider the Maldivian submission without prejudice to the position of the United Kingdom.”

Williams said that the UK believed that a Marine Protected Area (MPA) “is the right way ahead for furthering the environmental protection of the Territory.”

The decision to establish the MPA was, he added, “without prejudice to the current pending proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights. As such, there is no need to wait for a decision from the European Court of Human Rights before implementing the MPA.”

“The establishment of this MPA has doubled the global coverage of the world’s oceans benefiting from protection and gives the UK the opportunity to preserve an area of outstanding natural beauty containing islands and reef systems rich in biodiversity.”

He noted that once the area was no longer needed for defence purposes, “the UK is committed to cede the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius.”

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Maldives would welcome Chinese resort investment, says Ambassador Latheef

The Maldives welcomes Chinese investment in the country’s resort industry, Maldives Ambassador to China Ahmed Latheef has told the Chinese newspaper Global Times.

Chinese visitors have eclipsed European arrivals as the country’s major tourism market this year, according to figures from the Maldives Tourism Ministry.

Latheef told the Global Times he welcomed investment from China in resorts to boost the development of local tourism, explaining that “the difficulty we have at the moment is that we do not have enough hotels or beds to cater to the growing market in China.”

“The Maldives and China have enjoyed excellent bilateral relations, and there are many areas that can be developed through Chinese involvement and engagement in the Maldives,” Latheef said. “We would welcome initiatives from Chinese investors in the development of tourist resorts.”

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Surge in Chinese arrivals just a passing fad, cautions MATI

China has eclipsed the traditional European tourism markets of the Maldives to become the highest contributor of tourist arrivals to the country, but that gain is unlikely to last, says the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI).

Figures from the Ministry of Tourism indicate that that 15.3 percent of all arrivals this year originated from China – a staggering growth rate of 137 percent compared to the first eight months of 2009.

UK arrivals, traditionally the Maldives’ greatest market, sits at 14.9 percent followed by Italy at 12.6 percent. Average length of stay has dropped to 7.7 days, compared to the same period 8.1 last year.

Secretary General of MATI, Sim Mohamed Ibrahim, told Minivan News that Chinese tourists regarded the Maldives as a “novelty” destination, and that the growth would not last.

“The Chinese can swamp a destination in terms of numbers, but this is not the tourism the Maldives is about. Our product attracts sunseekers – Europeans,” he said.

“The Chinese who come do not come for the sun and the beach – they come because the Maldives is a novelty, a safe destination, and because of their new-found freedom to travel. Resorts are saying there are not many repeat visitors from China.”

Sim said that while it was “a good thing” that the spike in Chinese arrivals had filled in a seasonal gap in the market, Chinese tourists were comparatively low “yield” compared to other markets.

“137 percent growth is huge, but that’s heads-on-beds,” Sim said. This had not “had the impact on yield as much as it should” because of lower-than-average length of stays, uptake of full board packages and a general disinclination among Chinese visitors to spend on resort restaurants, bars and excursions.

“What we’ve seen January to August is that while most traditional markets have grown, except Italy, there hasn’t been much difference in arrivals figures from Jan-August last year. But Germany, France and the UK are all registering growth and picking up.”

Seasonal dips in the Maldives market during warmer months in the northern hemisphere have historically been filled with the arrival of Russians and Japanese, Sim explained.

“he Japanese market is not growing – it used to be a good market but it hasn’t been showing growth, and we need to do more work in Japan,” he said.

Early visitors from Russia used to be among the highest yield tourists, “but they have since become more seasonal like everyone else.”

“South Africa would be a good market for us, but it requires good flight connections, perhaps via Mumbai.”

The Maldives was proving a victim of fashions in the travel industry, Sim noted, particularly in the high-end segment.

“Right now the Seychelles and Mauritius are in fashion. We haven’t done much in terms of destination marketing, and we have lost the buzz we used to have. We have no new products that people can afford, there’s been mismanagement of the local economy, and it’s been hard for the new government to put things back together,” he said.

“Environmental doomsday messages” had not helped attract investors either, he added.

“Hopefully the new budget will have more money for destination marketing.”

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Nasheed to personally install solar panels on roof of residence

President Mohamed Nasheed will climb onto the roof of the presidential residence ‘Muleaage’ next week and personally install US$30,000 worth of solar panels.

The panels, which are reportedly being donated by California-based solar panel company Sungevity, are expected to save the government US$100,000 in electricity costs over their 25-year lifespan.

The President’s enthusiasm for conducting the project personally is potentially a nudge at US President Barack Obama, whose aides recently rejected an offer of Carter-era solar panels delivered to the White House gate by environmental activist and 350 founder Bill McKibben.

“[The aides] explained that there were various reasons that the White House roof was not available for a gesture with very little energy-saving potential and that the Obama administration was doing more to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions than any previous government. The word ‘stunt’ may have come up,” wrote the New York Times, in its Green Blog.

Nasheed’s Press Secretary Mohamed Zuhair said that while the installation of solar panels on Muleaage was “obviously not going to turn the Maldives carbon neutral”, it was a symbolic act that would nonetheless show that the Maldives “is the most vulnerable nation in South Asia to spikes in oil prices, and has an economic imperative to embrace renewable energy.”

Nasheed would be wearing a harness and a hard hat, he added.

Bright idea

The uptake of solar panel technology has been limited in the Maldives apart from small scale installations on some islands and several grant-aid projects, said a spokesperson from Renewable Energy Maldives, who requested anonymity.

“I know of very few households that have taken up this sort of thing up in Male,” she said. “We haven’t worked much with resorts either – they tend to think short term, and there’s less interest from them compared to utility companies and island administrations.”

The latter demand stemmed from the potential return on investment for solar power units on remote islands with high electricity prices.

“On some of the islands the cost for a household unit can be paid back within 4-6 years,” the REM spokesperson said.

While the President’s plan to personally mount solar panels on his roof was “excellent” and would increase interest in the technology, there was still no mechanism in the Maldives to sell the electricity generated back into the grid.

If the State Electric Company (STELCO) would agree to buy electricity back from the grid, “that would be the best way to promote solar.”

“A building is a long term investment and if the owner installs solar panels and Stelco agrees to buy the excess power, it will really be an incentive to save energy,” she said.

“Having said that, there’s a lot more improvements to do with efficiency and conservation that we can do in Male’.”

Smaller applications of solar technology were proving more popular, she explained, such as solar hybrid air-conditioning units operating through heat exchange.

“They might cost a bit more [upfront] than an ordinary air conditioner, but they are 30-60 percent more efficient and the can pay for themselves in 18-24 months,” she said. “This is the sort of thing that has great potential in Male’.”

President Nasheed has previously promoted the country’s aggressive stance on environmental issues by conducting stunts such as an underwater cabinet meeting.

Members of the cabinet last year donned scuba gear and used hand signals to conduct the meeting, in front of international media.

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Partisan media obstructing journalists from reporting ethically

The Maldivian media needs to move beyond the basics of reporting and on to media ethics if it is to build its credibility, become independent and break free from the influence of partisan politics, urged visiting journalism trainer Tiare Rath, Iraq Editorial Manager for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).

Rath, an American journalist and trainer who has worked in the US, Africa, Asia and the Middle East for companies including CNN and the New York Times, spoke last Thursday to a small group of Maldivian journalists and NGO representatives about the challenges and opportunities for journalism in a young democracy.

“I have been really impressed with news judgement here, and the understanding of the basic principles of journalism,” Rath said of her experience training young reporters in the Maldives.

“But on the other hand, one of the major issues all my students talked about is resistance among newsroom leadership – editors and publishers. Even if the journalists support and understand the principles being taught, they consistently tell me they cannot apply them,” Rath said. “This is a very, very serious problem that needs to be addressed.”

Rath compared the state of the Maldives media with that in Iraq, “where most of the media is partisan because that’s where the money comes from.”

“They haven’t been able to develop an advertising market, so political parties and powerful individuals back their own media outlets,” she said. “There have been a lot of issues with bias, media ownership and political pressuring of [Iraqi] journalists, and they don’t have the level of legal protection enjoyed by the media in the Maldives.”

However, despite the high-levels of violence obstructing democracy in Iraq, “the news media has flourished – there are more than 300 newspapers in Baghdad alone, and across the country there are thousands of newspapers and many small radio stations, and a lot of news sites and blogs.”

Media in countries like Afghanistan face additional problems, Rath added, “such as the lack of educated young people in the post-Taliban environment who want to be journalists. That has been a major issue.”

In Afghanistan the threat to journalists was primarily harassment and imprisonment, Rath explained, “and there have been efforts by the government to block out the media when it pushes too hard, especially on certain issues like drugs or warlords. The government just issues a media blackout and refuses to engage with the media.”

Even where it was present, “the response to any kind of critical coverage has been really hard. Again it’s a partisan media, because the traditional power brokers are the ones backing and financing it, rather than it being based on advertising [revenue].”

So while it was troubled, the situation facing the media in the Maldives was “a breath of fresh air” in comparison, Rath said.

“While there are challenges, a lot of other countries in a similar period following democratic transition are facing a lot more violence and oppression of the press,” she observed.

Many challenges faced by the Maldivian media were common to countries shaking off the vestiges of authoritarian regimes, she noted.

“A pattern I’ve definitely noticed in newly emerging democracies is that media retains the old style of attending press conferences and spitting out what was said, without doing their critical analysis. When you attempt to be objective it doesn’t mean your sources will always like you, and there may be backlash.”

Even in the West the media faced a lot of criticism, Rath said, “particularly for bias”.

In the UK journalism was the third least respected profession, and in the US it was second last, “right behind lawyers”, she pointed out.

Escaping powerbrokers

For media in an emerging democracy to develop beyond a partisan press and become independent, free from a legacy of political powerbrokers, it must evolve as a business, Rath explained.

“Advertisers do care about politics, but more often they care about money,” she said, “and at least in the US, that means they care only about circulation.

“If you have partisan media, one of the issues you have is that your market is really limited – you’re preaching to the choir. The other audience isn’t going to listen to you. But if you are impartial, there are broader sources of funding purely based on business value. If a news organisation emerges with a real and strong reputation for independence, and strives for objectivity, I do think the advertising dollars will follow, simply because of readership and audience reach.”

Rath said that while she respected the concept of media that was openly partisan and did not strive for impartiality, a trait common to a lot of media in Europe if not the US and UK, “I think it can be damaging in many ways because the credibility of the media is so important. If you don’t even aim for objectivity your market is going to remain very small, and the media is going to be credible only with the party members you are aiming towards.”

Initally, she said, this meant independent media needed a source of funding – an investment – “because it is about money for news organisations. It is important to have a source of funding, whether this is an individual or an advertising base, that cares more about independent media in principle, or who cares purely about money and so would be willing to invest in an independent media outlet that had a lot of potential for growth.”

Another step was ensuring that journalists had an organisation independent of their own newsrooms, such as a professional association, “dedicated entirely to good journalistic practice.”

“I think journalists need a place to meet. One thing I am concerned about in the Maldives is that the political polarisation may also have affected the journalists themselves. The Maldives is very small and everyone feels affected by politics, and has a personal connection to politics.

“I think it is really important for journalists from different news organisations to meet and discuss journalistic issues together. It’s also important to discuss ethics and professional standards, and to debate amongst yourselves what kind of media you want to have. And at the end of the day, if the media comes under attack, they will need to come together and defend themselves.”

The Maldives had a free press, Rath observed, and now it had to fight for respect – “a widespread challenge for anyone trying to fight for ethical journalism.”

“You’ve got a free press. Now how are you going to establish that press, how are you going to build its credibility, and what kind of values do you want it to have? You can technically do whatever you want – but a free press means having responsibility.”

Not as simple

Accepting that responsibility was not as simple as just reporting objectivity, Rath said.

“The model of objective and unbiased journalism has been rightly criticised because of the angle a news station takes on a story. It’s not necessarily bias, it’s part of news judgement, and it’s a huge debate across the industry,” she explained.

“But especially in a new or emerging democracy where there is a lot of political polarisation, it is very important to strive for objectivity to build the credibility of news organisations and to practice these traditional values of journalism, rather than to just be completely caught up in political debate.”

Journalists themselves could push towards more proactive journalism, rather than reacting to press releases and statements by political figures, Rath noted.

“I’m a big proponent of enterprise journalism, where you notice trends, talk to sources and do a feature on it – issues based journalism.

“I’d like to see that in the Maldives, but are there enough bodies? And enough money? It’s still small industry – journalists are assigned to small stories, and when you’re doing 1-3 stories a day you don’t have time to write up a great feature or do non-reactive news because you have to follow events going on around the country. But it’s a huge opportunity in the market.”

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Bad weather politics: rain cancels concurrent DRP protests

The Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) was to hold two concurrent protests this evening after the ‘For Sale’ protest organised by the party’s Deputy Leader Umar Naseer for Friday was delayed due to weather.

However continuing poor weather led to the cancellation of both protests, which would have coincided at the Artificial Beach this evening at 9pm.

Naseer told Minivan News that both protests “were planned to take place as one.”

The outspoken and uncompromising critic of the government’s privatisation of state assets issued a press statement this week announcing the ‘For Sale’ protest, without the apparent approval of the party’s secretariat.

The party’s council voted 16-11 in favour of bringing Naseer before the party’s disciplinary committee over the matter, leading Naseer on Wednesday to publicly question the sincerity of DRP leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali, and allege that senior officials in the party “are known to be involved in secret deals with the government.”

In support of Naseer, DRP MPs Ilham Ahmed and Ahmed Mahlouf condemned the council’s decision as characteristic of a “dictatorship.”

The DRP Council meanwhile announced a protest for this evening at 9pm at the Artifical Beach, coinciding with Umar Naseer’s protest until the cancellation of both.

Factional rumblings within the DRP became noticeable during its last congress, when the party voted against holding primary elections to determine the party’s presidential candidate, and instead opted for the leader to automatically become the candidate. Thasmeen was then elected to leadership unopposed, after prior public endorsement by former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Naseer, who had resigned from and attempted to disband his own Islamic Democratic Party (IDP) to pursue higher political ambitions, was a vocal critic of the decision to not hold primaries.

Following the congress Faathin Hameed, one of the DRP’s formative members and niece of the former President, told Minivan News that the voting itself was suspect because delegates “were bought before they even got [to Male’].”

“There were a lot of complaints from the islands lodged directly at the DRP office,” Faathin told Minivan News in March. “I made a point of writing to the committee in charge of the congress, headed by the [Parliamentary] Speaker Abdulla Shahid, reporting the complaints I was receiving and requesting action in order to ensure a transparent, free and fair democratic process.”

Faathin claimed the DRP’s “failure to fund its grass-root groups” had made the party dependent on outside financial support at the island-level, which had resulted in delegations from Male’ travelling to went to the islands “to ‘assist’ in holding the elections – teams sent by people with vested interests.”

Among the complaints shown to Minivan News were allegations from party members that they had been deliberately excluded from participating in island-level meetings, that island-level meetings were not announced or held in secrecy, that agendas were not announced in advance, and that candidates were not given the opportunity to put themselves forward. There were also disputes over vote counting.

Despite apparent tension over the issue of holding primaries, the party continued to insisted it was united even as a subsequent court case related to US$100,000 in debts was levelled at then-DRP leader elect Thasmeen by Abdulla Yameen, the former President’s half-brother and leader of the DRP’s coalition partner the People’s Alliance (PA).

Yameen contended at the time that that court case was “a civil case with no bearing on a political arrangement”.

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Lale student expelled in school stabbing incident

Lale Youth International School has expelled a 14 year-old student after he allegedly attacked a 13 year old student with a knife on Thursday.

A member of staff told Minivan News that the 13 year old victim required hospital treatment after suffering the injury to his arm, following a dispute over a girl.

“The parents of the cut student were very upset and contacted police,” the staff member said, noting that the implement used resembled a Stanley knife and had “left quite a scar”.

The student was expelled following a meeting of executive staff at the school. A source noted that the offending student had a history of “violence and behavioral problems” at the school.

“He failed the entrance exams at several other schools, came here and failed our entrance exam, but was still enrolled,” the source claimed, suggesting the matter highlighted “the lack of facilities available [to rehabilitate] juvenile [offenders].”

The source reported that police had fined the offending student Rf 50 (US$3.80) “as they said he was under age and it was the heaviest penalty available.”

However Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said police had no information concerning the issuing of an Rf50 fine, and noted that as the incident was a criminal act it would be investigated and the case sent to the Prosecutor General’s office.

“[The student] used a cutter to cut four inches on the other student’s skin,” Shiyam stated. “The injury was not so serious, but still the parents were concerned about the issue.”

Lale Youth International currently lacks a school counsellor after he returned to Turkey in mid-July, together with four other Turkish members of staff.

“The absence of a recognised counsellor has cost us, but other staff attempted to fill the gap without success,” the staff source told Minivan News.

“This incident underlines the fragility of the Maldivian juvenile system, as well as schools not properly screening students, and not giving them adequate care and education.”

Last month the school’s former principal, Turkish national Serkan Akar, was found guilty of assaulting children and sentenced by the Criminal Court to pay a Rf200 (US$14) fine.

Serkan had denied the charges against him, which included strangling and whipping a child with a belt.

Deputy Prosectutor General Hussain Shameem noted at the time that the Rf200 sentence was legitimate under the current penal code, which was drafted in 1968 and apparently not reflective of inflation.

In July the school’s Deputy Principal Suleiman Atayev, also a Turkish national, fled the country along with the computer studies teacher Yunus Yildiz.

Both staff members left seperately and did not inform the school they were leaving.

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