The Adhaalath Party’s Fuvamulah Wing has said that the government’s attempt to allow the sale of alcohol to foreigners by designating islands as uninhabited cannot go ahead on the island of Fuvamulah, ‘’which has the most number of people who can recite the Quran by heart.’’
In a press statement, the party claimed that government had “failed in its earlier attempts to legalise the trade of alcohol on inhabited islands and has now chosen another way to do it, which is by decreeing areas on inhabited islands as uninhabited.”
‘’Given that Fuvamulah has the most number of people who have learned the Quran by heart, it is like a slap on the face for the islanders of Fuvamulah,’’ the statement said. ‘’The world has seen that tourism can happen without nightclubs, casinos, alcohol and pork.’’
The party’s Fuvamulah Wing also claimed that the government was discriminating against Fuvamulah, referring to an incident when President decided to have a public referendum on whether to change the name of Thinadhoo to ‘Havru Thinadhoo’, that Fuvamulah being a large island was not considered in the list of islands to become cities.
Furthermore, the Adhaalath Party’s Fuvamulah Wing said that its members on the island will “fully corporate with the government and will work for free” to build guest villas, so long as there would be “no work inconsistent with the tenets of Islam.”
On September 2 the President’s Office said that President Mohamed Nasheed has signed two decrees, affirming the “Bilhifeyshi” area and “Thoon’du” area of Fuvammulah as two uninhabited islands under the decentralisation act.
Earlier this week at a press conference, Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, Adhaalath Party spokesperson, said that the decrees were part of a “Satanic plot” to sidestep legal prohibitions to selling alcohol in inhabited islands.
“We are not opposed at all to building a city hotel for the development of Fuvahmulah,” he said. “But you don’t have to sell alcohol at every city hotel. The Adhaalath Party sees the declaration of uninhabited islands within Fuvahmulah as an absurd move, as an act of madness.”
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