Tag: azra

Comment: International community’s inaction may lead to carnage

The Maldives is beautiful. It is an archipelago of 1200 islands with pristine beaches, blue lagoons and thousands of coconut palms. It is one of the world’s most exclusive tourist destinations. It is a honeymooners’ haven and diver’s paradise. It is a hideaway for over-exposed celebrities and a sanctuary for the stressed. A string of islands nature intended as a playground for the rich and famous. Somewhere where Western billionaires come to have spa treatments underwater and the famous can relax without being photographed. A picture postcard.

Well, here’s a news flash. The Maldives is home to 300,000 people. They may not appear in the photographs, they may not be serving you your cocktails, they may not be cleaning your $4500 a night room, they may not be serving you the $1000 dinner on your golden plate under the full-moon, and the hands massaging your body in the spa under the palm tree may not be theirs, but they exist. They live, they talk, they walk, they feel, and they have the same silly notions about human rights, justice, equality and the rule of law as any other people in the world.

Last week, the Maldivian government was overthrown; its first democratically elected president held at gunpoint and forced to write a letter of resignation. It has been reported that ‘tourists barely put down their cocktails’ on the beaches of their exclusive holiday resorts just a few waves of the ocean away, so far removed is the tourism industry from the reality that Maldives is for Maldivian people.

Despite the tourists, and the rest of the world, being kept in deliberate ignorance, video evidence exists of the coup right from the planning stages to its successful execution. The only missing footage, so far, is that of the deposed president sitting down to write the letter. Everything else, from the violent take over of the state broadcaster by armed ‘policemen’, the beleagured president trying to control military and police personnel who were involved in the coup, coup leaders commanding the defecting officers, extreme brutality by the police against the public in the aftermath of the coup – it is all there, if you want to see it. ‘Want’ being the keyword here.

The ‘international community’ has not wanted to do so. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had only months before described the deposed Maldivian President Nasheed as his ‘new best friend’, refused to lend him any support.

India, the supposed leader of democracy in South Asia, was the first to congratulate the new government and pledge its allegiance to its leader Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik.

Sri Lanka, despite Nasheed’s ill-judged support of President Mahinda Rajapaksa while the intenational community condemned him for alleged human rights abuses, followed suit.

It would come as no surprise for any observer of China’s recent foreign policy decisins that Beijing had no qualms over the legitimacy of the new government in declaring its willingness to carry on with business as usual.

Australia, home to many Maldivians and supposedly a close friend, found the Maldivian situation to be fodder for political jokes; the violence that its people endured in the aftermath of the coup nothing but material for double-entendres to be lobbed between parliamentarians on opposite sides.

And, of course, given the manner in which the United States has sought to spread democracy in the world in the last decade, it should come as no surprise that it finds no room to exercise its soft power in assisting Maldivians establish the truth about how their democracy was derailed last week.

The international community is making a huge mistake in ignoring the current crisis in the Maldives. The foremost reason being that the Maldives is incapable of conducting its own independent investigation into the events of the day as the international community is recommending. Like a small community in which twelve impartial people cannot be found for a jury in a trial where everybody has a stake in the verdict, there can be no tribunal of truth held in the Maldives where the majority is not biased one way or another.

The United States and others have rejected the deposed president and his supporters’ calls for new elections on the basis that there are no institutions capable of holding a fair and free one. What makes it, and the rest of the international community, then think that there can be an independent institution capable of conducting an impartial enquiry into the facts of 7 February? If any of the international teams that have been so active in the Maldives in the last week have done any homework at all, they know the biggest impediment to consolidation of democracy in the Maldives has been failure of the so-called independent institutions have been unable to free themselves from political influence.

It is not just the Maldivian people that the international community is betraying by leaving them to their own fate. It is also the ideals of democracy they have espoused so stridently, not to mention violently, for the last decade. By refusing to help the Maldivian people establish the truth of how its first democratically elected president was deposed, it is allowing the burial without ceremony of the role that anti-democratic forces – including radical Islamists – have played in bringing the fledgling Maldivian democracy to its knees.

It is also turning its back on a valuable opportunity to increase its own knowledge of how Islamists can radicalise not just a small Muslim community, but an entire population. Available evidence shows that without a clear pact made with Islamists, the coup could not have been successfully planned or executed. By refusing to help join Maldivians’ efforts to establish the truth of the events of 7 February and the conspiracies that led up to it, the international community is doing what it does best: ignore a threat until it escalates to the point where there is carnage on the streets and thousands of lives are lost.

The most significant characteristic of the days that have followed 7 February in the Maldives is the deafening silence of the Islamists. They helped incite hatred and anger towards Nasheed when he was the legitimate president; they were the loudest and the most vocal of his critics. In the week that has followed his ousting, they have been ominously silent. And, judging from how they have conducted their operations in the Maldives for the last decade, the silence is not due to pious reflection and quiet contemplation of God’s greatness. It is a silence of anticipation, the calm before the storm. The conspirators who financed the coup have done a deal with them, and they are waiting in silence because they are sure their grand chance is about to come. That is, the chance to impose Sharia rule in the country, the chance to crackdown on the women and turn them into inferior human beings and citizens, the chance to bring the Maldives back to the early days of ‘pure’ Islam and turn it into the newest region of the Islamic Caliphate that bin Laden envisioned.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of realist international politics where until a state’s own ‘national interest’ is threatened or one’s own self-interest is at risk, there is no ‘legitimate’ reason to act. As long as the anti-democratic activities in the Maldives pose no geostrategic threat to the ‘international community’, as long as foreign investment in the Maldives is safe, as long as tourists can keep sipping their cocktails under the palm trees, and as long as Maldivian blood does not spill on the pristine white beaches that the rich and famous lounge about on, paradise is not lost. Until then what prevails will be accepted as what passes as ‘democracy’ these days – government for the rich by the rich.

Azra Naseem holds a doctorate in International Relations.

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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Comment: Is the President serious about reforming the judiciary?

Has Anni given up the fight for an independent judiciary?

“We will reform the JSC”, President Nasheed said in May.

“When the powers were separated and the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) became the executive we came into a situation where the previous regime had a majority in the parliament.

“But in many minds the situation with the judiciary was far more worrying. Nothing had changed – we had exactly the same people, the same judges, the same manner of thinking and of dispensing justice.”

On Wednesday he appointed as his member at the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) Kurendhoo Hussein Ibrahim, a man who first came to public attention during the drafting of the 2008 Constitution as someone vigorously apposed to gender equality.

As a member of the Special Majlis, Hussein Ibrahim was vociferously opposed to the appointment of women as judges, and was particularly vitriolic in his comments against changing the Constitution to allow women to run for office of the President.

“He was very clear about where women should be in society – in a place where they have no say in the running of public affairs,” a senior member of the law community, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Minivan News.

“To be honest, I am very surprised that the President would appoint such an individual as Velezinee’s replacement,” he said.

Aishath Velezinee was the President’s Member at the JSC until 19 May this year, when she was unceremoniously removed from the position. Although there were unconfirmed reports, including in this newspaper, about a backroom deal that made her removal politically advantageous for MDP, neither President Nasheed nor Velezinee have so far spoken publicly about the reasons for her removal.

Hussein Ibrahim’s views are diametrically opposed not just to Velezinee’s, but also that of a President who frequently espouses his commitment to the democratic ideal of equality and non-discrimination.

The President’s Press Secretary, Mohamed Zuhair, said Hussein Ibrahim might have distanced himself from such hard-line views since he sat on the Special Majlis for redrafting the Constitution.

“It is quite possible that he has changed,” Zuhair said. Pressed on the question of whether he knew this for a fact, Zuhair said, “We believe that in accepting the position as the President’s Member, he is entering into a ‘social pact’.”

“It is our hope”, Zuhair said, “that he will work towards the realisation of the President’s goals and to further his views in his new job.”

Even if Hussein Ibrahim, seemingly appointed on a wing and prayer, does show himself capable of leaving behind his misogyny, there is still the question of his professional ability to push a reform agenda.

A misogynist with a sentencing certificate

Hussein Ibrahim has no formal qualifications and is one of the many ‘lawyers’ allowed to sit on the bench on the basis of a Sentencing Certificate – a legacy of the Gayoom era. Having served as a magistrate in two different lower courts, he later did a stint as an ‘Islam Soa’ at Aminiya School.

In other words, he is a member of the very same brigade of “exactly the same people, the same judges, the same manner of thinking and of dispensing justice” President Nasheed said he wanted removed from the judiciary.

Removing unqualified judges was a Constitutional requirement, stipulated by Article 285. Put in charge of carrying out the task, however, the JSC dismissed Article 285 as “symbolic” and allowed all but a handful of the unqualified judges to remain in the judiciary. The President has now appointed just such a man to represent him at the JSC.

Hussein Ibrahim’s presence at the JSC means that female members of the judiciary, few in number but who as a group represent the most qualified judges in the country, now have another man overseeing them who not only thinks they are biologically and intellectually inferior to him, but also knows less about the law than they do.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which in February this year published a highly critical report on the JSC, pointed to members’ lack of technical ability and knowledge as one reason for its inability to do its job of ensuring the judiciary’s ethical and professional standards.

Citing ‘administrative efficiency’, as the reason, the JSC abolished the Complaints Committee in May this year. It was the mechanism by which the JSC was to have investigated complaints against the judiciary.

The JSC’s 2010 annual report shows there are over 200 complaints – some involving judges at the country’s highest courts – that are yet to be investigated. Any attempts to force the JSC to investigate complaints using the courts system have so far been unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, any criticism of the judiciary is becoming increasingly difficult as the courts gag the media, or issue threats against those who speak against its actions – even when they are clearly unconstitutional.

Recent examples include the Criminal Court’s decision to ban the media from Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim’s alleged corruption hearings and the Supreme Court’s reprimanding of President’s Advisor Ibrahim Ismail (Ibra) for urging the public to fight for their right to an independent judiciary.

What is even more shocking is that the JSC convened an emergency meeting to discuss Ibra’s remarks where members agreed to ask ‘relevant authorities’ to investigate Ibra.

The JSC is constitutionally mandated to investigate complaints against the judiciary made by members of the public. It has no authority to investigate complaints against members of the public made by the judiciary.

Clearly the JSC needs someone who, at the very least, knows what its own role is.

As seen in the case of Velezinee, who was stabbed in the back in January this year, fighting for judicial reform is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

Hussein Ibrahim is a religious conservative who thinks women should be covered up and chained to the kitchen sink when they are not occupied with the holy task of breeding. He has no record of pushing a democratic agenda, and has no formal qualifications in any profession. It is hard to imagine him taking on the JSC let alone the judiciary.

Which begs the question: is President Nasheed serious about reforming the judiciary?

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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Comment: Parliament is laughing at you

What a laugh the Majlis is having at the people’s expense. If voting to give themselves the extra MRF20,000 (US$1300) was like spitting people in the face, having the pay cheque backdated is like rubbing the polity’s face in the MPs’ bejewelled excrement.

For what is this money being rewarded? For emotional distress caused by having to bend to the people’s will for eight arduous months? Has life really been that tough on MRF60,000 US$(3900) a month that MPs need financial redress for their suffering?

It really must have been difficult coming up to Ramadan, having to forgo one or many of all those pre-Ramadan MP necessities. No pre-fasting trips to Bangkok, no spiritual rejuvenation trips to Sri Lanka, no shopping trips to Malaysia, no tri-annual holiday abroad for the parliamentary off spring.

Having had to endure a month in which the prices from fish to furniture have gone beyond the common man’s reach, the collective empathy of the people are no doubt with the Majlis.

Kudos to the 17 who have said they do not want the allowance.  Most fascinating, though, are the 16 who abstained. Would the allowance have been possible without them?

How complex and nuanced a question is: do you think you deserve the MRF20,000 a month at a time of grave national debt? It requires a simple yes or no answer – you are either with the people or you are not. Sitting on the fence on this question is even more self-serving than those who voted to keep the allowance – at least they were honest.

And then there are the MPs who are speaking out against the proposed income tax. On the grounds that it applies only to a small percentage of the population! Taxing the small percentage of the mega rich who have this country in a stranglehold, and letting the poor escape the burden – that is the purpose of it, one would have thought. In some MPs’ books, taxes should be equal – this is some people’s understanding of democracy, alas.

The avarice in the parliament is widespread, and its connections to big money are many. On the day of the salary vote at the Public Accounts Committee, its Chairman Ahmed ‘Jangiya’ [Panties] Nazim was in court for allegedly embezzling money from the public coffers to the tune of US$400,000.

If MPs stuck the polity’s face in their excrement, the Criminal Court’s decision to ban the media from MP Nazim’s court hearings buried the public in shallow graves dug in the same matter.

The accused is the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, the man who chairs the meetings at which decisions are made on how public accounts are to be balanced. He stands charged with fraud. If this is not a matter of public interest, then what is?

And what does the Criminal Court’s justification for the decision to ban the media even mean? Article 42 of the Constitution, to which the Court referred in its decision, says courts can only exercise their discretion to exclude the media if doing otherwise would disrupt public order, public morality or national security. None of these issues are at play here.

If the Criminal Court’s decision to gag the media refers to ‘other special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice’ as said in Article 42, what the Court is effectively saying is that it is open to suggestion by every lowly hack out there.

The ‘democratic norms’, only according to which the discretionary powers in Article 42 are to be exercised, has long established that dangers of prejudice by media criticism arises where a jury is involved – not in cases where judges are sitting alone.

Unlike a jury of 12 ordinary people, judges – assumed to have achieved higher levels of education and higher levels of ethics and morality than ordinary people – are seen as above outside influence, and able to make a ruling based solely on the evidence before him.

By saying the court cannot come to a fair and impartial ruling because of what is being said in the media, it is clearly admitting that the judge sitting alone is easily influenced and cannot be trusted.

Perhaps balancing the people’s right to freedom of expression with an accused person’s right to a fair trial was not a module covered in the Sentencing Certificate?

The media should be in an uproar over this gagging order. Apart from a statement from the Media Council, however, there has been nothing.

Where is the Maldives Journalists Association with their usual indignation? Where is the Maldives National Journalists Association? Where are the highly paid members of the Broadcasting Commission? Where is the burgeoning ‘free press’?

Will the real Fourth Estate please stand up?

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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Comment: Let’s talk about ideology

There is an unbearable emptiness to Maldivian political rhetoric. Everywhere we look are people who say what they do not mean, and mean what they do not say.

Take former President Gayoom’s pre-Ramadan Epiphany: Z-DRP and Adhaalath are ideological twins.

Since when? Does Adhaalath not espouse beliefs that Gayoom once allegedly had people tortured for? Legend has it that the kind of beards that men sport with such pride these days were once shaved with chilli powder by Gayoom’s henchmen. This is a madness in method missing even from the notorious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ at Guantanamo Bay.

Now, though, we are to believe that this vast ideological chasm between Gayoom and Them has been magically crossed. That somehow, in the turmoil of transition, the ideological kaleidoscope was shaken so much that Gayoom and Adhaalath are now soulmates.

Do you find it hard to believe that an individual could flip-flop across such vast ideological terrain in one lifetime, let alone in one political career (no matter how long)? Is it difficult to grasp how one man can go from actively banning the buruga to aligning himself with those who take the measure of a woman’s morality by the very same piece of cloth?

Do you find it difficult to get your head around how a man who once courted international diplomatic accolade with such rigour would now align himself with a party that thinks Iranian approval is a foreign policy victory? Even bearing in mind that this is Gayoom we are talking about, it is hard to make sense of such a complete volte face, is it not?

Do not be too hard on yourself, though, for no such vast ideological changes have occurred. The truth of the matter is there was no ideology to begin with. We are an ideologically empty vessel, and the proof is not just in the clamour that such vessels tend to make and we hear constantly on our airwaves. It is there to see in the many crossings made over seemingly irreconcilable ideological lines in recent times.

Remember DRP’s most vitriolic and vociferously anti-MDP figure in the Majlis, MP Ali Waheed, moving to MDP in May this year? The air was filled with such a triumphant yellow that everyone looked jaundiced. What was there to celebrate? That MDP was one man closer to an outright parliamentary majority.

Granted, a majority is clearly necessary if MDP is to surmount the blockades to progress set up by the Maldivian Tea Party-ers. But on how firm an ideological ground is a party willing to welcome – if not buy – a man who until the moment of transfer had been against everything the party stood for?

Fast-forward a few months, and there is Mr Ali Waheed, the proud owner of a MRF 4.6 million home, on the beachfront of Hulhumale’. How did he afford it? It is a question that one must not ask for fear of ‘politicising’ the issue, says the man himself. Indeed. These journalists must be insane to find anything political about an MP, even on the outrageous monthly income of Rf 60,000, buying a plot of land for almost Rf 5 million.

Then we have Adhaalath, the party of purists and the gatekeepers of heaven for Maldivians. One day they describe the West as the Great Satan, the Puppet Masters of the religiously weak Dhivehin, the corrupters of our children and the seducers of our youth. The next day they fly in individuals who represent the worst the West has to offer to lecture us on how we should conduct and govern ourselves.

British MP George Galloway

First there was Philip Green, according to whom England is a country full of drunken louts who do nothing but puke and urinate alcohol on the streets of London twenty four hours a day seven days a week.

Then Adhaalath proudly links us via video to George Galloway, former UK MP and Celebrity Big Brother star who once danced on national television in a pink lycra cat-suit. While even sinful liberals found Galloway’s behaviour hard to comprehend, self-righteous Adhaalath seems to have had no such qualms.

If Adhaalath believes what it says, how can it hold Galloway up as a figure of authority to the same people that it wants to cleanse of all alleged Western debauchery? Galloway’s decisions in the Middle East have not been exactly wise, to put it kindly. But that’s all right, because Adhaalath found some perverse use to make of him. And Galloway lapped it all up, like the cat that he was on Big Brother, happily dictating our foreign policy as ‘an entirely Muslim country’.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, in the same week we were celebrating our independence from British protection. It was also the same week in which Gayoom was speaking of the imminent threat we face from a supposed revitalisation of British imperial ambitions.

Ideological complexities? No. Lack of ideology, lack of a purpose except one’s own political or pecuniary power. What matters is knowing which side of your bread your Halal butter is on. What matters is that there is a pot of political gold at the end of the rainbow of beliefs one can feel free to pick and choose from.

This emptiness of rhetoric, of being, is dangerous.

As we saw from the riots in London earlier this month, when the people at the top believe that it is okay to rob from the poor with impunity like the bankers did in the West; and that it is alright to violate the rights of others as Murdoch’s news empire did in Britain – the chances are that the little people below may feel free to do the same.

If we want a society with purpose and belief, we need leaders who say what they mean; not individuals who take a Hypocrite’s Oath when assuming office.

To see the future of things to come if we continue on this path of duplicity, we need only look at the rampant hypocrisy among us from the designation of ‘Top Fashion Accessory’ status to the buruga to the ‘Back to the Prophet’s Day’ men on Harley Davidsons with their orange beards grotesquely flowing in the wind.

If all this is doing your head in, sign up for an Incantation Class at the Islamic Foundation’s Halal Magic Courses. Book early, though. They are proving even more popular than the fishnet stockings and the Botox shots that are to accompany next season’s lamé burugas.

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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Comment: Majlis fiddles with democracy as society burns

The country is broke and the price of living is going up every day while the standard of living is going down.

The price of a can of tuna is now 20 percent higher than it was a few months ago. A valhoa mas kiba, part of our staple food since time immemorial, is now beyond the common person’s reach. A bottle of water was Rf10 just a month ago; it is Rf14 this month.

Electricity bills, water bills, gas bills, are all hugely more expensive than any other country in the neighbourhood. A majority of people are living hand to mouth.

A vast chunk of the country’s youth population are either addicted to drugs or recovering from it. They are unemployable, and out on the streets, committing crimes big and small or looking in vain for another chance at life.

The standards of teaching in public schools are abysmal, and private schools remain an unaffordable dream for the majority. To say that public schools are free is to lie through one’s teeth; for people are paying through their noses for private tuition – a parallel education system that exists in a parallel universe. It is the elephant in every classroom that nobody in authority wants to talk about – the government cannot regulate it without first acknowledging the massive failings in the education system; and a majority of the teachers do not want to talk about it because it is the cash cow that supplements their meagre incomes.

Children from other islands are having to migrate to Male’, boarding with host families or packed into small rooms the rent of which they share; paid by parents who break their backs working on farms or on fishing boats, just so their children can get an education. The housing crisis and social problems related to overcrowding increase.

The health system is too weak to cope with any unexpected outbreaks of disease; Maldivian doctors are still the minority and are offered less pay and benefits than their expatriate counterparts; and infant and adult mortality rates are needlessly high. It was all too clear to see with the recent dengue fever outbreak.

Unemployment rates are sky-high while trafficked Bangladeshis are bought and sold by the planeload. They live in their scores of thousands working and living on building sites; existing in an alternate realm of worker drones, buzzing away in the background, building, serving, cooking, cleaning, maintaining; jobs that Maldivians consider themselves too good to be doing.

Their presence is acknowledged only when the buzzing gets annoying; when their levels of ‘civilisation’ are deemed not to match our allegedly impeccable manners and faultless social graces; and when foreign governments chastise the Maldives for its cruelty for putting a price on the heads of human beings and selling them to the highest bidder.

Longstanding traditions of peace, friendliness and cleanliness have disappeared; replaced with avarice and aspirations of grandeur achieved by any means possible. Basic civility, let alone friendliness, is conspicuous in its absence: the smile; the queue; the exchange of niceties; respect for the elderly; the weak and the vulnerable; the knowledge of belonging together – what are they? People push, shove and climb over each other to get to an undefined ‘there’ faster than anyone else – literally and metaphorically.

It is all there to see in the pantomime that the Majlis is enacting, fiddling with democracy as society burns. What is the purpose of these theatrics? Are we supposed to be impressed with his behaviour? Are we supposed to admire this display of ignorance as ‘people power’? Is this to be seen as standing up (or sitting down) for the rule of law? Are we supposed to applaud these MPs for their ‘valour’ in forcing a needless confrontation between legislative and military power?

Are we supposed to cheer in adulation or tremble in fear when one MP who was only recently bought by one party now shouts at the party he had just left?

Are we to ignore the fact that if such members did indeed have an ideology, or a set of deeply held political beliefs or values they would not be so easily bought and sold?

Are we supposed to laugh with them and chuckle at the smirks on their faces when they are being led away by the army? Are we supposed to let our children hear the filth that is sprouting from their mouths into our airwaves on daytime TV? Are we to appreciate as media savvy the manner in which, like a bunch of schoolboy bullies in a playground, they are taking photographs and videos of each other being bundled away by men in army fatigues?

Are we supposed to be appreciate as role models of feminism the female voices heard screeching like cockatoos at the spectacle of MPs being carried away like chimpanzees by zoo handlers? What exactly is being celebrated here? What state will our nation be in the coming years if these are our highest representatives, if this is the pinnacle of success that our children as future leaders can aspire to?

Whatever destruction that three decades of dictatorship could not unleash on our society with its ruinous policies, society is wreaking upon itself. We did not have a transition to democracy, we just changed one supreme power to which we subjugate ourselves for another: Mammon for Maumoon.

The Majlis should be where the people turn to for solutions to their problems. It is, however, both the representation of all our problems as well as their nucleus and their source.

What a sham.

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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