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State revenue increased 89 percent in 2011

The Maldivian State received Rf4.5 billion (US$290 million) in revenue last year through the Maldives Inland Revenue Authority (MIRA).

Revenue in 2011 increased by 89 percent compared to 2010’s revenue of Rf2.4 billion (US$155 million).

According to MIRA statistics, most revenue was received from the tourism industry.

Within the industry, resorts pay Rf752 million (US$48 million) as tourism tax, Rf666 million (US$43 million) as Tourism Goods and Services tax (T-GST) and Rf511 million (US$33 million) to extend a resort lease, Haveeru reports.

Airport Service Charge (ASC) raked in the second-highest revnue at Rf337 million (US$21 million).

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CMDA to license companies for Sharia-compliant securities

Capital Market Development Authority (CMDA) has opened applications to companies wishing to provide Sharia-compliant securities.

According to local media, CMDA will screen companies to ensure that their operations and transactions are made in alignment with Islamic Shariah.

Licenses will be awarded following consultation with the Capital Market Sharia Advisory Committee.

Sharia-compliant security services are most notable for their exclusion of interest. Currently, Amana Takaful is the only insurance company licensed to provide Shariah-compliant services to the Maldivian public.

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Public finds Parliament “most corrupt” institution: Transparency International

A new report published by Transparency International finds that 90 percent of surveyed Maldivians believe that “corruption has increased” or remained level in the last three years, while they dubbed the parliament as the “most corrupt” institution.

The “Daily Lives and Corruption: Public Opinion in Maldives” report surveyed 1001 people in the Maldives between April 23 and April 29 of 2011 to capture public perception of corruption in the country. The survey was conducted by Gallup Pakistan of Gallup International, a leading polling service.

The report revealed that over half of the people interviewed (56 percent) believe the level of corruption in Maldives has increased over the past three years, while another 34 percent believed it remained the same. Only ten percent said corruption levels declined.

When people were asked to rate the extent of corruption in nine different institutions on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “not at all corrupt” and 5 meaning “extremely corrupt”, 55.9 percent of responders claimed 77 seat People’s Majilis (Parliament) is “extremely corrupt” – suggesting that the public perceive the elected legislative body as among the most corrupt institutions in the country.

Meanwhile, 55.4 percent of respondents viewed political parties as “extremely corrupt”. The judiciary received a similar ranking from 39.4 percent of individuals polled.

Military and religious groups were considered the least corrupt institutions.

In addition to measuring public perception, the report also evaluated the prevalence of bribes in the civil sector. According to its findings, six percent of responders claimed to have paid a bribe to one of the nine service providers over the past 12 months. The most bribes were paid to Customs, while the fewest were paid to the Police.

Bribes were reportedly paid to either accelerate procedures or minimise conflicts at institutions which provide land services, registry and permit services, utilities, education, and medical services.

Transparency officials point out that although the government or executive was not classified as an individual institution at the time of polling, the services for which people paid bribes are government components.

Most bribes were paid by men (8 percent) with women paying fewer than half that amount (3 percent). All bribes were paid by people of low income, the report reveals.

Speaking at the report release ceremony held on Thursday at Traders, Senior Program Coordinator at Transparency International Rukshana Neenayakkara pointed out that it is significant that 90 percent of Maldivians believe that the presence of corruption has increased or remained unchanged over the past three years.

Referring to the high perception of corruption within the parliament and judiciary, Neenayakkara said the figures reflect a “dismal drastic situation” of grand corruption in Maldives, which can create a “worse situation” in the coming years. “So we need action now”, he asserted.

According to Neenayakkara petty corruption is uncommon in Maldives though it is endemic in other South Asian countries which were similarly surveyed.

Project Coordinator for Transparency Maldives Aiman Rasheed explained that “grand corruption” which spread across the judiciary, parliament and members of the executive is “more dangerous” compared to the petty cash corruption, and stressed on the need to address the problem through systematic change.

Faced with such endemic and high-level corruption, it is “up to the people of the Maldives to demand better governance”, he insisted.

The Maldives rose slightly to rank 134 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), released in December 2011.

The country scored 2.5 on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean), placing it alongside Lebanon, Pakistan and Sierra Leone.

The score however is a mild improvement on 2010, when the Maldives was ranked 143th and below Zimbabwe. The Maldives still rated as having higher perceived corruption than many regional neighbours, including Sri Lanka (86), Bangladesh (120) and India (95).

Speaking with Minivan News in December, Rasheed said it was “up to the people of the Maldives to demand better governance”, and noted that the nation’s ability to address corruption would have political ramifications for the 2013 presidential election, particularly for young voters.

The “Daily Lives of Corruption” report concludes that 93 percent of Maldivians think that “ordinary people can make difference in the fight against corruption”.

Other countries surveyed were Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.

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Coalition condemns government for “not complying with demands and respecting Islamic principles”

The ‘December 23 coalition’ of NGOs and opposition parties has condemned the government for “making a mockery of the demands” and equated its decision to shut down resort spas and massage parlors with “committing atrocities to defame Maldivians in front of the world.”

In a press statement today, the coalition noted “with surprise and regret” that the government has “not shown any indication either through words or deeds of complying with the demands and respecting Islamic principles.”

On December 23, the coalition rallied thousands of protestors across the island nation in a call to ‘Defend Islam’ in the Maldives.

Five demands were addressed to the government: prohibit Israeli flights from operating in the Maldives, close all massage parlors “and such places where prostitution is practiced”, reverse the decision allowing the sale of alcohol in areas of inhabited islands declared ‘uninhabited’ – such as in Addu City and Fuvahmulah where the government plans to build city hotels – condemn UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay and apologise for her comments against flogging, and remove allegedly “idolatrous” SAARC monuments in Addu City.

The coalition previously set January 5 as the final day for the government to address the demands.

Observing that deadline, the coalition today made notice that participants of the December 23 mass protest “are not enemies of the Maldivian economy and made no calls for any measures that would limit or undermine opportunities provided within the law for tourism or any other economic activity.”

The coalition argued that the government “gave a deaf ear to the demands, insulted principles of religion and mocked the Maldivian people.”

Religious party Adhaalath’s spokesperson Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed was unable to comment on the discussions. Referring to the coalition’s next step, he said the party “will always prefer to solve problems peacefully.”

Speaking in his own capacity, ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Alhan Fahmy predicted that “it looks like another protest.”

Fahmy disagreed with the coalition’s allegations against the government. “The government has been really responsible in this matter, it has made progressive moves to respond to the demands from the coalition and those who supported it,” he said.

Fahmy said MDP leadership had not yet convened to discuss the matter, and he could not comment on behalf of the party.

Following the December 23 demonstration, in the interest of “respecting Islamic principles”, the government adopted an all-or-nothing approach. The Tourism Ministry ordered that spa operations be shut down while the government announced it was considering a nationwide ban on pork and alcohol, two commodities prohibited in Islam.

Parliament’s National Security Committee also passed a resolution advising against licensing of Israeli national airline El Al to operate direct flights to the Maldives.

The government noted that the monuments in Addu fell under the remit of Addu City Council, and added that only Parliament could issue or request a statement against Pillay as it was to that independent body that she made her claim, noting that her visit was organised by the UN office in Male’.

President Mohamed Nasheed yesterday lifted the week-long ban “because the government does not want the economy to suffer any damage during the time Supreme Court takes to come to a decision.”

The government has lately sought a consultative opinion from the Supreme Court over whether operation of spas and the sale of alcohol and pork for tourism purposes within the Muslim nation of Maldives is constitutional.

Tourism is the nation’s leading economic contributor, generating 70 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP) indirectly. Attorney General Abdullah Muiz yesterday pointed out that a substantial amount of the 2012 state budget of Rf14.8 billion (US$959.8 million) relies on expected revenue from the tourism industry.

Although no statistics are currently available, tourism officials have noted that the industry has suffered booking cancellations and “irrevocable damage” since mid-December, when news of Islamic extremism and political unrest began reaching international media.

Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI) filed a case against the government at the Civil Court over the spa ban earlier this week.

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Comment: Maldivians helping 700,000 non-Muslims go to hell every year

As all of us know very well, we Maldivians are a pious Muslim community who have it enshrined in our constitution that to be a Maldivian necessarily means to be a Muslim. If we give up our Muslim identity, our rights as a Maldivian citizen are taken away automatically.

How this has been accommodated within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights (of which we are a signatory) is still a mystery to me. For it says that every human being has the right to the freedom of conscience. And what is freedom of conscience if we cannot choose our religion?

Recently I found myself discussing the issue with some friends and we thought of a scenario where a Maldivian waiter is serving non-Muslims in a resort. The waiter will serve all alcoholic beverages that the guests (referred in this article as non-Muslims) request for. He will also catch glimpses of them wearing bikinis and frolicking about in the white sandy beaches. And yet, he himself is strictly prohibited from any such behavior, not only because of his job description as a waiter, but because, if he chooses to engage in any of these activities he is facilitating his guests with, he will find himself a criminal. I told my friends that I found this contradiction a bit troublesome. I understand that some Maldivians justify this state of things by citing various reasons.

Even though the Maldivian constitution was last revised as recently as 2008, it clearly states that a Maldivian citizen can only be a Muslim. And from this follows other laws and regulations which prohibit Maldivians from consumption of alcohol and any other behavior that is deemed outside of the Muslim moral code. And tourism regulation in the country is perhaps a good example of this. We facilitate tourists to travel thousands of miles and spend as much dollars to travel to the beautiful islands of the Maldives (of which we are the inhabitants) and do things we believe will only take them closer to hell; drink alcohol, engage in sex outside marriage, wear revealing clothes in public, etc. So we have a situation where we ourselves refrain from the bad things but actually help others who do not belong to our community to do these very sinful things. The same laws of the land has different provisions to different persons, and while some laws describe us as having certain unalienable rights, others deny us those very same rights.

I have often thought of bringing this up with the MPs that represent the community I live in, who are individuals vested with the responsibility to scrutinize the laws of the country so as to make them more compatible with our beliefs and outlook. However, after seeing them on TV recently and hearing them speak on the radio, I have come to the conclusion that a majority of these MPs will not warm up to such an idea. I find some of them highly insular and provincial. And sometimes I wonder what they are trying to achieve by being in the parliament.

A friend recently commented that ‘Maldivians are the niggers of this country’, encapsulating the feelings I have tried to state above. He was referring to the black Americans in USA who were deprived of even the basic human rights until the Civil Rights Movement. It is one thing to have attitudes about things, but it is quite another to enshrine them in the highest code of regulation for a community, the Constitution.

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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ACC files against Home Ministry over office partitions

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed a corruption case with the Prosecutor General’s (PG) Office on Tuesday against certain members of the Home Ministry’s Tender Evaluation Board.

The case accuses members of engaging in “unlawful practices” while evaluating bids to set up partitions in the ministry’s office, located on the tenth floor of the Velaanage office complex.

The case accuses State Home Minister Mohamed Mahir Easa, Maimoona Ahmed of Henveiru Mahaasa, Hamid Yousuf of Zeelithan/Raa atoll Hulhudhuffaru, Ahmed Shareef Nafees of Dhaftharu 1119, Ahmed Ishaq of Galolhu Cherry, Hussein Rasheed Yousuf of Dhaftharu 2065 and Mohamed Adam of Machangoalhi Maanika, Haveeru reports.

According to the ACC, marks were given for experience not conforming with the criteria stated in the information leaflet for setting up partitions, Haveeru reports.

The case has been filed under Article 12(a) of the Anti-Corruption Act.

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MATI continues civil court case to determine legality of spa ban

Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI) has revealed it will continue its case at the Civil Court questioning the government’s right to close resort spas, while the government yesterday lifted the nationwide ban on spas and massage parlors.

The controversial circular issued by the Tourism Ministry on 29 December 2011 ordering that spas be shut down was cancelled by a civil court injunction last night – a few hours after President Mohamed Nasheed ordered that the spas be re-opened to prevent further damage to the economy.

The government had earlier asked the Supreme Court to provide clarity on the legality of operating spas and the sale of alcohol and pork, as the constitution requires Maldives to comply with the tenets of Islam.

Speaking to Minivan News, MATI Secretary General Sim Ibrahim Mohamed pointed out that the court’s ruling was temporary, and that the spas would only remain open while cases in the Supreme and Civil courts on the matter await verdicts.

MATI claims that an agreement between the resorts and the government was violated.

“Spa facilities are approved by the Ministry of Tourism, and promoted by MMPRC (Maldives Marketing and PR Corporation). We are trying to find out if the government had the authority to close the spas in the first place,” he explained.

He insisted that the government’s decision had incurred “irrevocable damage” to the tourism industry and had become a “legal issue to which we are trying to find legal clarity.”

However, in the event that the court rules against the government’s actions, Sim was unsure if the government would be required to compensate for losses to the industry.

MATI’s lawyer and Former Attorney General Azima Shukoor observed that the resorts would be able to sue the government for damages, if the case is ruled in favor of MATI.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a statement today quoting Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem, who claimed that the Government’s decision to re-open the spas operating in the country reflects the emerging national consensus that the Maldives should continue to follow the moderate and tolerant religious path it has pursued ever since Islam was introduced 800 years ago.

”Naseem expressed hope for a positive ruling from the Supreme Court on the matter,” the statement read. ”The Supreme Court ruling, once and for all, would settle the question of whether the Maldives wants to remain a modern, tolerant Muslim country founded upon democratic values and human rights, or would chose to become otherwise.”

According to the statement Naseem reassured investors with business interests in the Maldives and foreign tourists visiting the country that the government would remain steadfast in ensuring economic security and stability while upholding the fundamental values of democracy.

The Foreign Ministry added due to the judiciary’s delayed verdict, and given that public support for the moderate, tolerant Islam traditionally practiced in the Maldives had risen over the extremist rhetoric, the government had decided to remove the temporary spa ban.

”Naseem stressed that the government’s decision [to reopen spas] was backed by a clear majority of Maldivians who wished to continue to follow the path of moderation,” the Foreign Ministry stated.

As the government and public awaits a ruling from the top court, President Mohamed Nasheed said yesterday that the ultimatum on spa operations “woke the nation from its slumber and sparked a healthy debate about the future direction of the country”.

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Swedish death metal band Opeth comes to Maldives

Swedish heavy metal band Opeth will perform live in the Maldives on February 7 at Dharubaaruge in capital Male as part of its Asian tour.

Opeth agreed to play in the Maldives after Maldivian heavy metal band Nothnegal contacted its manager Northern Music Company.

The band previously played in India, however the Asian tour will take Opeth to new audiences in China, Taiwan and South Korea, said managing director Andrew Farrow.

In its lengthy compositions Opeth fuses progressive, folk, blues, classical and jazz elements with black metal and death metal. The band has released ten studio albums, three live DVDs, three live albums, and two box sets.

The current lineup includes Mikael Åkerfeldt (lead vocals, guitars), Martin Mendez (bass guitar), Martin “Axe” Axenrot (drums, percussion), Fredrik Åkesson (guitars, backing vocals) and Joakim Svalberg (keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals, percussion.

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