President Mohamed Nasheed:
A new era in Maldives
Sri Lanka-Maldives relations achieved another major milestone
yesterday as Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed began a State visit to
Sri Lanka.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed |
President Nasheed has brought fresh winds of change and new insights
to Maldives as well as to SAARC.. He has Last year, he earned a place in
the history books as the person who brought an end to the 30-year rule
of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom - Asia’s longest serving leader. At just 41, he
is one of the youngest leaders in South Asia, but years of challenging
the Maldives’ one-party political order has honed his political skills.
Nasheed - a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience - is
known locally as Anni. He has been a constant critic of the regime of Mr
Gayoom over the years and has spent long periods in jail for his
political activities.
To his supporters Nasheed is a latter day Nelson Mandela, overcoming
the hardships of prison to secure an inspirational election win against
the odds.
He has risen to the challenge of leading the tiny nation - made up of
about of 1,192 islands off the tip of India - whose very existence is
under threat from global warming. He has already announced plans to
shift the population He argued throughout the presidential campaign that
the Maldives also faced other grave challenges: maintaining its
lucrative tourist trade, ensuring a fairer distribution of wealth and
tackling the drugs culture among bored youths. We really need to
change... We should be able to have a better life here Mohamed Nasheed
Depicting himself as a harbinger of change throughout the campaign, Mr
Nasheed has pledged economic prosperity through privatisation once he
was in power.
Educated in the Maldives and then the UK, Nasheed was one of the
earliest and boldest dissidents in the islands, pursuing an early career
as a journalist until he was persecuted for his writing.
In the early 1990s he established a reputation for his political
commentaries in the Sangu magazine at a time when vocal criticism of the
government was almost non-existent.
Sangu was later banned, and he was put under house arrest and
imprisoned after giving an interview to the international press about
his ill-treatment in detention. After spending some time abroad upon his
release, Mr Nasheed was later jailed again for political writing,
becoming an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience in 1997.
During periods spent in jail, he studied and later wrote three books
on Maldivian history both in English and the local Dhivehi script.
Elected as an MP in 1999, he was later forced from his seat following a
theft charge which was widely condemned at the time as politically
motivated. He was prosecuted for taking files from outside the former
residence of ex-President Ibrahim Nasir, an action classed by the state
as theft.
In 2001 he unsuccessfully tried - along with other dissident
politicians - to register the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). Mr
Nasheed now lives in the capital island of Male with his wife, who works
for the UN, and two daughters. In September 2003, he intervened when
19-year-old Hassan Evan Naseem died in the country’s largest prison,
asking a doctor to see the body before the death certificate was signed.
The event marked a turning point in the country’s history, sparking
mass street and jail riots which resulted in the shooting of three
prisoners. Along with other reformists, Mr Nasheed finally managed to
register the MDP on 26 June 2005. But two months later he was arrested
again after staging a sit-in in Male’s Republican Square in protest over
police handling of “Black Friday” demonstrations a year earlier.
In frustration at the slow pace of reforms, the MDP was close to
calling for a revolution in November 2006. That resulted in the
defection of some of its senior members who argued that that the party
should be pursuing a path of diplomacy and negotiation instead. But
grassroots activists remained loyal, and the MDP continued to lobby for
freedom of speech and assembly.
Between then and now, Nasheed oversaw the evolution of his party from
an anti-Gayoom group into a government-in-waiting, successfully
rebranding its identity. Nasheed seeks to offer a vision of a new
Maldives, with better transport, education and housing and equal
distribution of wealth.
There is no doubt that under his visionary leadership, the Maldives
will thrive and develop further, while enhancing its friendship and
cooperation with all South Asian countries including Sri Lanka. |