Day: March 12, 2011

Meltdown fears raised in Japanese tsunami aftermath

Concerns have been raised of a potential meltdown may be taking place in Japan at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, just 24 hours after the country was devastated by an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale and an ensuing tsunami.

With more than 600 people thought to have already been killed as a result of yesterday’s tsunami, the BBC reported today that a “massive” explosion had taken place at one of two nuclear plants in Fukushima, situated 250 miles northeast of Tokyo. The incident has raised fears of a meltdown, despite claims from Japanese officials that both sites’ container housing had not been damaged.

An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale hit Japan yesterday, prompting a tsunami warning to be issued for nations in the Pacific Ocean. Media reports today have speculated that the total number of fatalities in Japan alone from the quake and tsunami could stretch into the thousands.

The first earthquake occurred 382 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, reported the US Geological Survey.

According to today’s BBC report, a state of emergency has been put in place at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini power plants by the country’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, with engineers now working to clarify if any of the reactors have gone into meltdown after shutdowns had automatically occurred following the earthquake.

Television pictures from Japan have since shown what news sources claim to be the collapse of one of four buildings at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant as a result of the explosion, though no information has been officially confirmed on what part of the site had exploded or the cause behind it.

However, the government representing the Fukushima prefecture in which the plants are based confirmed that radiation levels at the plant during one hour were equal to the normal annual allowable expenditure at the site, the BBC said.

Meanwhile, the Agence France Presse (AFP) news organisation has reported that the Japanese prime minister’s deputy, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, has sent a “hyper rescue team” to the plant site as part of government contingency measures including collecting iodine, which can used in trying to combat radiation sickness.

Following yesterday’s earthquake, tsunami warnings were immediately issued for Japan, Taiwan, Russia and the Mariana Islands, while Guam, the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Micronesia and Hawaii were placed at a lower warning level.

Hussein Waheed from the Maldives Department of Meteorology confirmed that a tsunami warning was issued for the Pacific Ocean a minute after the earthquake had struck. No warning had been issued for the Indian Ocean region, he said yesterday.

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Addu-based arts camp targets overturning Maldives’ cultural limitations

This week will see the continuation of a ten-day International Artist’s Camp that organisers claim will for the first time bring together figures from both Indian and Maldivian society to try and overcome concerns about cultural limitations across the country’s atolls.

The camp, which has been organised by local association the United Artists of Maldives (UAM) and the High Commission of India, Male’, will see 14 artists – five from India and nine from the Maldives – gathering in Gan, Addu Atoll between 10 March to 21 March.

The project has been devised in order to produce a body of work expected to be put on show in Male’ as well as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the UAM has said.

Indian artists like Saurabh Narang and Gurdheep Singh Dhiman will join together with young artists from across the Maldives to collaborate and attempt to raise the profile of both their own artistic work and the cultural output of the nation as a whole. Other similar events are expected to be held around the region at later dates, the UAM said.

Speaking at the launch of the camp on Thursday 10 March in Male’, Mohamed Solih, honorary counsul of thailand in the Maldives and a UAM patron, said that although it may not always be apparent, “art is everywhere” and served to demonstrate how ideas can come in many forms, whether detailing happenings in the past, present or the future.

“However, it is sad to note that art and cultural activities are lacking in many areas. Budget cuts in the schools have impacted [these activities,” said Solih. “It is therefore important for all art lovers to unite and promote [culture] around the country.”

Solih said that in order to try and promote cultural pursuits in the Maldives, it was important to speak to people who did not understand the value of art and try to point out that music and reading material that were part of many people’s lives were all products of an artists’ vision.

“All of us know that arts are of equal value in our economy. In our schools and in our daily lives this is not a popular stance,“ he claimed. “Yet with some studies showing that music helps with learning and visual arts helps students with abstract thinking, this argument needs to be voiced over again. I am only one voice; but when one voice though is joined with many more, the effect is significantly increased.”

Using some artistic flourishes of his own, Indian artist Saurabh Narang said that he believed that like a seed, a nation’s art needed to be “nurtured and supported”.

Taking the Maldives’ natural assets as an example, Narang added that in flying into the country, the aerial views of blue depths and deep waters afforded by the experience were a powerful way to spark imagination.

In looking at the impacts of the art camp, Indian High Commissioner Dnyaneshwar Mulay claimed that the event was a historic development in the Maldives, particularly in how the nation perceived itself politically and socially.

“Political histories are always documented, but the social histories and, more important than that, the cultural histories are not always documented,” he said. “Culture is the true soul of humanity and unless the soul is solid, healthy, no revolution of any kind can be sustained.”

In trying to strengthen this notion of “soul”, Mulay said he believed that artists, musicians, painters, and performers of various instruments and arts were a key part of national identity.

“I’m very happy that the movement of democracy that started in the Maldives is now taking its true shape by spreading cultural values,” he said.

However, Mulay said that he had wished to see a stronger presence from the Maldives Government at the event, whose support was praised as being very important in raising the profile of cultural identity among the people of the Maldives.

“Personally I wish there was a more formal and stronger presence from the government, particularly the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, which has been a very important part of a partnership and cooperation to move forward,” he said. “I hope the message will get through that we do value their support.”

With the current Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Dr Mariyam Zulfa away on business in Berlin at the International Tourism Bourse (ITB) trade show, a unnamed source within her office had said it had therefore been impossible to attend.

However, beyond the ministry pursuing its own cultural and artistic programmes, the same source said that with a number of civil servants such as Ahmed Naeem being important members of the UAM, it was difficult for any involvement without raising suspicions of a “conflict of interests”.

Nonetheless, President Mohamed Nasheed last week addressed the significance of art and culture, as well as how the government hoped to nurture it, as part of his 2011 opening parliamentary address.

The president claimed that on the back of events like the Hay Maldives literary festival being held in the country for the first time last year, the government was looking to try and develop local skills and talent with the aid of an Arts Council and Heritage Council during 2011.

Beyond the possible challenges facing the government in pursuing the promotion and developments of arts and culture in the Maldives, other sectors of society such as religion are also an important part of understanding national identity.

Ibrahim Nazim, a co-founder of religious NGO, the Islamic Foundation of Maldives (IFM) told Minivan News that when it came to the role of art in a strongly Islamic nation like the Maldives, the organisation personally had a very specific view of culture in the country.

“What I would say is that our [the IFM’s] stand is that we see more western types of music, such as those involving guitars and other instruments as being discouraged under Islam,” he said. “Some forms [of music] may be permitted. Such as using instruments like hand drums. But generally we believe music is discouraged”

Nazim said that in areas such as visual arts, the IFM also held some reservations, such as in films where false names or false identities were being assumed by actors.

“These are things we see as being discouraged in Islam,” he said.

Nazim added though that there were forms of arts that were welcomed as important parts of Islamic faith, not least in the guise of architecture and scripts carved into walls and wood that he believed were very beautiful.

“There have been Muslim artists in fields such as architecture and these are most welcome,” he said. “We welcome forms of art provided that it does not resemble any Christian forms [of culture]”.

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Parliament has authority over Police and MNDF, declares Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of the Maldives has declared that both the Police and the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) should be answerable to parliament and its National Security Committee – known as the 241 Committee – whenever requested.

The Supreme Court said the decision was made after all judges unanimously agreed on the matter, which relates to overseeing the procedures of the nation’s security forces.

The declaration was delivered after parliament, under article 95 of the Constitution, requested the Supreme Court provide legal council on the issue back in November last year, when the police and military failed to attend the Majlis for questioning when called.

Article 95 states that ”The People’s Majlis may, by resolution, refer to the Supreme Court for hearing and consideration of important questions of law concerning any matter, including the interpretation of the constitution and the constitutional validity of any statute.

The Supreme Court shall answer the questions so referred and shall provide the answers to the People’s Majlis, giving reasons for its answers.

Parliament last year attempted to summon the Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Faseeh and MNDF Major General Moosa Ali Jaleel for questioning, who then both dismissed the parliament’s requests and refused to attend the meeting.

The Supreme Court said Article 239 (b) states that ‘’the security services shall be subject to the authority of the People’s Majlis.’’

The Supreme Court also said that, according to article 99 (a) and (b), it was clear that the parliament is obliged to supervise every action of the security services and to ensure that their actions are within the constitution and laws.

It is a legal responsibility of the parliament to question cabinet ministers over their work and cabinet ministers are obliged to answer truthfully to the parliament according to the constitution, the Supreme Court said.

The Parliament’s 241 Committee is chaired by opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Ali Waheed.

When the 241 committee tried to summon both the police commissioner and the MNDF’s major general last year, the committee’s scheduled meeting was cancelled after alleged clashes with some Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MPs.

MDP MPs then accused the 241 committee of attempting to influence bribery investigations into Jumhoory Party leader MP Gasim ‘Buruma’ Ibrahim and Peoples Alliance (PA) Party leader MP Abdulla Yamin, who were then kept under house arrest.

Yamin and Gasim are both also members of the 241 Committee.

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Comment: A preface to explaining democratisation in the Maldives

If several different people don’t write about the significant events changing their societies, romanticization of and myths around those events creep in, and that is one way unreal heroes and unreal villains are born. Because of this lack of literature on the historic changes that have been taking place in the Maldives, this musing is a preface to democratisation in the Maldives.

Since the beginning of what Samuel P Huntington famously called the “third wave” of democratisation in mid-1970s, efforts toward finding explanations of comparative democratisation intensified. To this day, there is however no single theory of demoratisation that will satisfy everyone or that will explain every single case of democratisation. There are probably many factors and independent variables that explain democratisation.

The Maldives’ case also shows that no single explanatory factor or theory is sufficient. But, following Huntington, we could try to explain Maldives’ democratisation along its “why” and “how”.

The Why: modernisation, valuation and grievances

There will hardly be any Maldivians who seriously dispute that the current president Mohamed Nasheed has no important role to play in democratisation in the Maldives.

“What and who” he is, I think, is a representative case of why and how democratisation happened in the Maldives. The “what” factors are well explained by modernisation theory of democratisation most famously advanced by Martin Lipset. Lipset argued that that economic development and modernisation are strongly correlated with democracy. In brief, he argued that education (an aspect of modernisation) facilitates people’s valuation of their beliefs and values and thereby they come to accept democratic values.

I said Nasheed is a representative case because I want to emphasise five factors relevant to democratisation in the Maldives. First, Nasheed was educated in Great Britain where he was, both as a child and an adolescent, exposed to democracy in practice.

Second, I want to emphasise the fact that the global discourse of democracy as the most viable political system permeated the hearts and minds of many Maldivians.

Third, Nasheed is not a representative case of the whole or even majority of the Maldives’ population. He is a representative case of only those who are relatively exposed to the discourse of democracy and who have been one way or another aggrieved by the personal dictatorship of Gayoom.

Fourth – and I know this is going to be very controversial – the Maldives’ democratisation is not a mass-based democratisation movement as evidenced by the relatively low support the “democratic opposition” garnered in elections starting from the election for Constitutional Assembly. Alternatively, this is evidenced by the high support Gayoom still attracts.

Hence, the Maldives is closer to the transition model explained by Guillermo O’Donnell. The Maldives is a case of democratisation largely by elites who had either come to value democracy (because of modernisation factors) and/or who were aggrieved by the personal dictatorship of Gayoom (While the “clan power-struggle” model explained by Mohamed Nasheed in his illuminating book, Maldives Politics, bears some structural similarity to this model, I doubt Nasheed’s model any longer explains the Maldives’ politics).

Fifth, international factors, which are of course again well documented in democratisation literature, played an important role by virtue of the fact that both the authoritarian system and opposition were subjected to what I call international “politics of naming and shaming”.

The How: a play of elites?

“Why” factors, however, don’t tell us the causers of democratisation. This is where transition model is helpful.

Democratisation researchers subscribing to transition paradigm say there must always be a crisis in the authoritarian regime for democratic transition to take place. It could be an economic or other crisis.

Where was this crisis in the Maldives? Was it Evan Naseem’s murder and subsequent riots? Was it 12/13 August mass arrests and subsequent divisions in Gayoom’s regime? Or was it the December 26 Tsunami?

Another factor emphasised by O’Donnell is the rise of a more moderate/liberal elite faction within the government. Alternatively, the dictator himself or herself could start to liberalise because of the crisis.

The Maldives I think is a case of ‘transplacement’ transition where transition occurred through the actions of both the government and the opposition. Gayoom of course maintains it is a case of ‘transformation’ where he initiated reforms.

It is debatable whether Maldives is one of transplacement or transformation or mixed case.

It certainly is not a case of replacement where the personal dictatorship of Gayoom was overthrown or replaced by democrats.

It is perhaps more accurate to say that liberalising elites within the government played the game within the regime. Also, ironically, the hiring of (PR firm) Hill & Knowlton itself could have played against the hardliners in regime as ‘public relations’ never work without real reforms.

The transition paradigm also gives room for the opposition elite. In fact, in the Maldives the opposition protests (again by no means popular mass mobilisations) and opposition campaigning by figures such as Ahmed Shafeeg Moosa using 21st century information technology were the reasons a liberalising elite faction was born in the first place.

There were also factors that facilitated or obstructed democratisation in the elite-interplay. These included, among other things, the problem of divisions within the opposition itself. Usually, it is the moderate elites within the opposition that facilitate democratisation.

Revolutionary-minded figures such as the current president Mohamed Nasheed within the opposition were unsuccessful in mobilising enough numbers for an outright overthrow of Gayoom regime. They ultimately had to moderate or adapt themselves towards a “transplacement” model where the opposition and regime elites negotiated the terms of democratisation.

Finally, while the opposition protests were not mass-mobilisation protests, they had the benefit of seeking international attention for a “politics of naming and shaming”. As a country dependent on import, foreign aid, tourism, and good standing with the outside world, the “politics of naming and shaming” by long-standing human rights NGOs like the Amnesty International and pressures from the EU became too much for the authoritarian regime.

So that is how the Maldives transitioned to an “electoral democracy” in October 2008.

Azim Zahir is studying for a Master of Human Rights at the University of Sydney, Australia.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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