Month: April 2011

Parliament accepts amendment to Clemency Act to uphold death sentences

Parliament today accepted the amendment presented by Jumhoree Party (JP) MP Ibrahim Muthalib which requires the death sentence be implemented as execution if the Supreme Court upholds a death sentence issued by a lower court or if the Supreme Court itself issues a death sentence.

Out of the 59 present MPs there were 14 MPs who declined the amendment and three MPs that did not vote on either side.

MDP MPs Alhan Fahmy, Eva Abdulla, Hamid Abdul Gafoor, ‘Reeco’ Moosa Manik, Ilyas Labeeb, Imthiyaz Fahmy, Ibrahim Rasheed, Rugiyya Mohamed, Mohamed ‘Colonel’ Nasheed, Ahmed Rasheed, Mohamed Aslam, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and DRP MPs Ali Azim and Hussein Mohamed voted to dismiss the amendment.

Meanwhile MDP MPs Ahmed Easa, Ahmed Hamza and Independent MP Mohamed Nasheed were the three that did not vote on either side.

If the amendment is passed the president will not have the authority to grant clemency on those sentenced to death and law enforcing agencies will be left with no other choice but to execute those sentenced to death.

Statistics from the Criminal Court show that over the past 10 years, it has sentenced 14 persons to death which have not implemented. Police later arrested them for committing other offenses.

Before Muthalib presented this amendment, Maldivian Democratic Party MP Ibrahim Rasheed who also voted to dismiss the bill today presented the same bill weeks ago and withdrew it in the last minutes.

Rasheed said he will present the bill after some belated bills in the parliament were passed.

When presenting the amendment Muthalib said the objective of the amendment was to uphold Islamic Sharia in the Maldives.

Meanwhile, the Criminal Justice Procedure Bill presented by MDP Parliamentary Group leader Moosa Manik was approved by the parliament recently and has been sent to the National Security Committee to review.

The Maldivian judicial system defers to Islamic Shar’ia law in cases where existing laws and regulation are found not to apply. In an interview with Minivan News in 2008, Minister for Islamic Affairs Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari claimed that three crimes punishable by death under Islamic Shar’ia were murder, adultery (by those already married) and apostasy.

Critics of the amendment have pointed to the state of the judiciary as a reason for delaying the bill, with one judge last week acknowledging that 31 serving judges had criminal records. The judiciary has also been criticised by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which questioned the independence of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC).

The last person be judicially executed in the Maldives was Hakim Didi in 1953, who was executed by firing squad after being found guilty of consipiracy to murder using black magic.

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Devaluation marks failure of economic policy: Yameen

The government’s decision to devalue the rufiya and replace the fixed exchange rate with a managed float marks the failure of its economic policy, claims minority opposition People’s Alliance (PA) Leader Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom.

Addressing supporters at the ‘Gayoom faction’ rally last night, MP Yameen, half-brother of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and long-serving Trade Minister in his cabinet, argued that the only circumstance where devaluation was advisable was to make the country’s exports cheaper and more competitive.

“[But] if the country does not produce a lot of goods for export, there will be absolutely no benefit from devaluing the currency,” he said, adding that the decision to devalue was both “political” and “an admission of failure.”

Following its inability to deal with the dollar black market two years after the formation of a parallel market, “what the government did was arrange a mechanism to auction the dollars [that they believe is being hoarded].”

The decision to devalue was therefore “political” as opposed to based on sound economic reasons, he said.

Yameen added that he believed the exchange rate would never fall below the pegged rate of Rf12.85.

“Since the way to get a good price for a scarce commodity is through an auction, they had to do this out of necessity and as a last resort, because they have no other way,” argued the MP for Mulaku.

However, he continued, the changes would be to no avail unless the country’s ballooning fiscal deficit is substantially reduced as urged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Yameen went on to lambast the government’s infrastructure projects as well as preparations for the upcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit to be held in Addu City as “unnecessary spending.”

Conceding that floating the rufiya could solve the black market problem, Yameen however argued that those who had dollars would hesitate to release it if they did not have confidence that the rufiya would not depreciate further.

As a consequence of devaluation, Yameen predicted, inflation would rise by 30 percent: “For a person who gets Rf1,000 [as income], the value of what he can spend is actually Rf600, because of inflation. So, for example, if a can of Nespray [powdered milk] is sold for Rf28 today, with the change in the price of the dollar, we are saying it is going to cost Rf38…the biggest burden will be borne by the poorest.”

To back his assertion, Yameen referred to GMR’s recent 50 percent hike of lease rents at the Male’ International Airport, a decision likely to lead to a corresponding increase in air fare for domestic travel.

President Mohamed Nasheed meanwhile insists that the economy would stabilise over the course of the next three months and that the managed float was necessary “to ensure long term stability and prosperity of the Maldives.”

MMA speaks

Breaking its long silence on the dollar shortage, the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) issued a statement Thursday estimating that allowing market forces to determine a price within the 20 percent band of fluctuation would “solve the present dollar shortage in the near future.”

“We would like to take this opportunity to inform the Maldivian people that the MMA has undertaken various different efforts to solve the foreign currency problem,” it reads, adding that the central bank was in the process of strengthening the legal framework for monetary policy.

The MMA statement reveals that the Maldives had a managed floating exchange rate between Rf8.50 and Rf11.50 from 1987 to 1994.

On April 10, 1994, the floating rate was replaced with a fixed peg, which was then increased by nine percent in April 2001.

While dollar shortages had been experienced “occasionally in the past” due to strong demand coinciding with the Hajj (pilgrimage) or school holiday season, the MMA explains, an expansionary fiscal policy since 2004 coupled with the global recession in 2009 led to the formation of the dollar black market.

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Leaked UN report claims both Sri Lanka and rebels guilty of war crimes

A leaked UN report into the closing days of the war in Sri Lanka contains “credible allegations” that the Sri Lankan government shelled civilians after encouraging them to gather in no-fire zones.

The report also claims the army shelled hospitals, UN facilities and aid workers with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The report further alleges that the government intimdated and in some cases silenced the media, even abducting journalists is “white vans”.

The report also accused Tamil rebels of using civilians as human shields, forcibly recruiting teenagers to fight, and of murdering civilians who tried to leave the war zone.

A former UN spokesperson for the UN in Sri Lanka was reported in the UK’s Independent newspaper as saying that the report “damns the government of Sri Lanka’s so-called war on terror, which incidentally killed many thousands of civilians. The Tamil Tigers were equally rotten in their disdain for life.”

The full report is expected to be released officially next week.

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Police dismiss allegations that officer was arrested in connection to haul of 10 alcohol bottles

Police have denied reports that one of three men arrested in a Heniveru house last week in possession of 10 bottles of alcohol was a police officer.

Alcohol is banned on inhabited islands in the Maldives.

”[The officer] was arrested while he was inside that house with two others,” claimed a person familiar with the matter. ”He is currently under house arrest, the other two are still in police custody.”

Deputy Head of the Serious and Organised Crime Department (SOC), Inspector Abdulla Nawaz, told the press that three men were arrested inside Aadhage in Henveiru Aadhage, after police discovered eight bottles of alcohol inside a bag in the house and other two more bottles in a second bag.

Six empty alcohol bottles were discovered inside the house, Nawaz said, and a bayonet.

Nawaz did not give further information about the three persons arrested.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said that no police officer had been arrested in connection with discovery of the ten bottles and the knife.

”A police officer may have been arrested in an operation conducted,” he said. ”But we can confirm that no police officer was arrested in connection with the alcohol bottles.”

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Foreign Ministry drafting prisoner exchange legislation

Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem has revealed that the government is working on prisoner exchange legislation in the hopes of repatriating 12 Maldivian nationals currently serving sentences overseas.

Local laws, Naseem told Haveeru, currently “don’t allow inmates, held in overseas prisons, to be transferred to the Maldives in order to complete their sentences. We cannot allow them in without making sure that they complete their sentences in the Maldives. That is only possible if the Maldives judiciary allows inmates to complete their sentence, handed in a foreign country, in Maldivian prisons.”

The Foreign Ministry said Maldivians were imprisoned in six countries.

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Gan RAF reunion prompts scholarship fund

A group of former British Royal Air Force (RAF) servicemen who were based at Gan in the 70s have set up a fund to improve medical care in Addu Atoll, the country’s southern group of islands.

In March this year, 28 ex-personnel who had worked in the atoll returned to Gan for a reunion, where they were saddened by the decline in medical standards since their departure.

Richard Houlston, 62, who spent a year in the early 1970s working in ground communications on the island of Hithadhoo said: “All of us servicemen enjoyed our time in the Maldives, and the feeling among us was that we wanted to give something back to the community. I feel a close affinity to Addu, it was as if I had never left.”

Richard worked on the HF Transmitters on the isle of Hithadhoo, at the far end of the horse-shoe shaped atoll of Addu from November 1969 until 1970. He and his comrades would visit nearby Gan for scuba diving lessons and shopping trips.

“My memories of Hithadhoo were all good,” said Houlston. “I loved the climate, I loved messing about in the boats we had there, I loved fishing and swimming, I spent many hours snorkeling on the reef, I learnt to scuba dive. When I arrived back on Addu my first impressions were that it seems to be more built up now than when I was there, and obviously has some quite well-off inhabitants, but many people seem to be quite poor. Many of the inhabitants still have to rely on rain water for drinking, stored in large tanks and in those sorts of temperatures that can’t be good for health,” he said.

“When we arrived back on Addu, it became obvious to us very quickly that what they needed help with most was medical care. To go to a decent hospital, many locals have to travel all the way to India, which is a 1000 mile-plus journey. There is a hospital on the island of Hithadhoo, but standards there are very poor: even if they have the equipment, no-one has the expertise to use it.”

When the RAF was in Gan, islanders used to enjoy first class medical facilities for free. Now they have third world services and people must pay for their treatment. The 30 year dictatorship and focus on development of Male’ did not help matters.

Now Houlston and Larry Dodds have set up the Gan Scholarship Fund, which aims to raise enough money to help train more medical staff and improve the standard of medical equipment in the atoll.

“The thing that concerns us most is the fact that many inhabitants have to travel to India for decent medical facilities. Addu is so remote that they need their own medical facilities on hand. When the RAF was there they had those facilities, but when we pulled out in 1976 they were left with nothing,” Houlston said.

“I know there were political issues at the time that did not help their situation, but I feel we have a moral obligation to try to help them now if we can. I feel very passionate about this, and I know that many of the guys I was there with in March feel the same way.”

Their idea is to try and raise enough money to pay for the training of one medical student from Addu, so they can then work in the hospital on nearby Hithadhoo. Much of the hospital equipment is also outdated and needs to be replaced.

“The original plan was to appeal to the RAF personnel who had served on Gan over the years to donate money towards the scheme, now I do not now that this is going to be enough, so I am trying to come up with ideas to help supplement this. I am open to suggestions,” Houlston admitted.

Returning to the Addu Atoll a year ago was an emotional journey for the group, who share many fond memories of their time on the island. Houlston said that his time in the Maldives had left a lasting impression on him, and that he and his former colleagues had been touched by the people of Gan’s enthusiasm when they returned.

“We had such a wonderful welcome on the reunion trip to Addu in March of this year, that it rekindled my love for Addu and its people,” he said.

“The RAF had not visited the Maldives for over 30 years, but the reception was incredible. Children from primary schools danced for us, they arranged trips for us, and thousands of people greeted us wherever we went.”

“It was a very moving experience,” he added. Richard is now in daily contact with people from Addu and is working with both Hithadhoo Regional Hospital and the IDMC private hospital, soon to be Hawwa Trust, which will help provide the next generation of medical doctors along with the help of some former friends from the Royal Air Force.

For more information visit ‘Gan Then and Now’ on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_123539864379070

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Gayoom reprimands DRP council for decision to discipline Mahlouf, Illham and Waheed

Honorary Leader of the main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) and former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom called on party’s council last night to take back its decision to recommend MPs Ahmed Mahlouf, Ahmed Ilham and Gayoom’s lawyer Mohamed Waheed for disciplinary action.

In a statement read out by daughter Yumna Maumoon at the ‘Gayoom faction’ rally at artificial beach, Gayoom warned that taking disciplinary action against the three council members would lead to further weakening of a party already riven by internal conflict.

“At such a critical moment, with party unity severely shaken and members despairing as a result of the decisions taken by the party’s council and the disciplinary committee, in violation of the party’s charter and democratic principles and with total disregard to the feelings of the party’s members, ever since Ahmed Thasmeen Ali assumed leadership, I deeply regret [the council’s decision] as it goes completely against the wishes of most common members and would only split the party even further,” Gayoom’s statement read.

Advising the council to retract the decision, Gayoom noted that “taking action against those you disagree with is not done anywhere that is run along democratic principles.”

“And [disciplinary action] is not allowed either by the Maldivian constitution or Islamic principles,” he said.

Deputy Leader Ilham and MP Mahlouf stands accused by the council of misleading the public about Thasmeen, disregarding the best interests of the party and violating the party’s charter.

Ilham however told Minivan News last week that “a Deputy Leader can be dismissed only if a third of the party’s congress votes to dismiss him.”

The DRP MP for Gemanafushi argued that any decision by the disciplinary committee to dismiss him would therefore be invalid.

Beginning with rumblings of discontent at the third DRP congress in March 2010 over disagreement regarding a presidential primary, the worsening factional split within the main opposition erupted in December that year following the dismissal of Deputy Leader Umar Naseer.

After condemning Thasmeen of “running the party dictatorially”, Gayoom has since withdrawn his support for Thasmeen as DRP’s presidential candidate for 2013.

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PA now welcoming DRP supporters to its ranks

The People’s Alliance (PA) has said it would welcome registered members from fellow opposition groups like coalition partner the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) – currently embroiled in factional infighting – as it seeks to boost its support-base over the next year.

Party registrar Hiyaly Mohamed Rasheed told Minivan News that after agreeing though a council meeting back in 2009 to not take members from the DRP due to a coalition agreement between them, the group was now looking to bolster its current tally of 2,751 registered supporters from “all across the Maldives”.  He claimed this membership drive would now also include members from the DRP, which is the country’s main opposition party and headed by MP Ahmed Thasmeen Ali.

The DRP has in recent months become embroiled in a bitter war of words between serving leader Thasmeen and his predecessor and former Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. The split between the two men and their respective supporters is reportedly linked to the party’s dismissal of former deputy leader Umar Naseer by its disciplinary committee last December.

Just last week, the DRP’s Council announced it had take the decision to forward a number of party members including DRP MPs Ahmed Mahlouf, DRP Deputy leader MP Ilham Ahmed and former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s lawyer Mohamed Waheed to the party’s disciplinary committee.

The decision against the three men was taken over allegations that they had misled the public over the work and reputation of Thasmeen to further the interests of the so-called  Z-DRP faction said to support Gayoom.

MP Ilham claimed at the time that the DRP charter did not allow the party’s leader to dismiss anyone who criticises them.

”The charter states that a deputy leader can be dismissed only if a third of the party’s congress votes to dismiss him,” Ilham said. ”There will be internal disputes in political parties, but this is not how to solve it.”

Thasmeen was unavailable for comment when contacted by Minivan News at the time of going to press.

DRP “Problems”

Howver, the PA registrar claimed that the reports of DRP infighting had the potential to negatively set back wider political opposition in the country.

“I was once in the DRP,” Rasheed said. “Yet now the DRP has itself decided that there are two factions in the party, that means that it currently has problems,” he added.

The claims have been made as the PA announced that more than 100 people were registered as party members on Friday (April 15) as part of attempts to overtake the religious Adhaalath Party as the country’s third most supported political group. The PA is led by Abdulla Yamin, half brother of former President Gayoom.

Speaking to Haveeru yesterday, Mohamed Rasheed claimed that the PA was now working to almost double its membership base to 5,000 people by next month. Rasheed said he hoped the drive would bring the PA closer to matching the Adhaalath Party in terms of the size of support, which it estimates amounts to about 6000 members at present.

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AG appeals ruling on harbour plot sales

The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) last week appealed a Civil Court ruling that declared the President’s decision to auction plots from the southwestern harbour area in Male’ illegal.

Solicitor General Ibrahim Riffath told newspaper Haveeru that the court did not provide legal justification for its ruling, which held that the auction was invalid as a law governing sale of state assets and property as required by article 250(a) of the constitution was not in effect.

The state has however asked the High Court to rule that the existing Land Act should apply to property transactions.

The plot auction was challenged at the Civil Court last year by the short-lived alliance of opposition parties in parliament, consisting of main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party and minority opposition parties People’s Alliance, Dhivehi Qaumee Party and Republican Party.

The Civil Court ruling in favour of the opposition came after the government collected Rf100 million (US$7.7 million) in advance payments from five auction winners. Five plots of 2,000 square feet, three plots of 5,000 square feet, two plots of 7,500 square feet and one 10,000 square feet plot in front of T-jetty area was auctioned last year.

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