Dictatorship VS Democracy

 

Raees Nasheed was the Maldives’ first democratically-elected head of state, but the former dictatorship never accepted its loss of power when he took over after free elections in October 2008. Forging an alliance with Islamic extremists, the former dictator’s half-brother Abdulla Yameen helped orchestrate a violent coup on 7 February 2012 that forced Nasheed to resign. Yameen then took over as president following a rigged election process. In February this year Yameen threw former president Nasheed into jail on absurd charges of ‘terrorism’ and had him sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Nasheed was not the only one targeted. Currently every opposition leader in the country is either in jail or threatened with it, and 1,700 people who have joined opposition pro-democracy protests are also facing imprisonment. The offices of independent media outlets have been ransacked, journalists have been ‘disappeared’, and – most recently – a lawyer acting for the imprisoned Nasheed was stabbed in the head in broad daylight in the Maldives’ capital Male’.

 When he was president, internationally recognised for his leadership on climate change. He stood up to the big powers at the ill-fated Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, and captured headlines beforehand with the brilliantly executed PR stunt of holding a meeting of his cabinet underwater to symbolise the threat sea level rise poses to the Maldives islands

Unnoticed by the media however is the fact that as well as suppressing democracy the new Maldives dictatorship has also ditched Nasheed’s climate change targets. Out goes the carbon neutral plan, in comes a new target for tripling emissions by 2030 and importing huge amounts more diesel to generate electricity on the islands. While other coral atoll nations such as the Marshall Islands and Kiribati have submitted ambitious plans to the UN climate body in advance of the upcoming Paris conference, the Maldives has offered a mere 10% cut below ‘business as usual’ by 2030 – one of the weakest targets in the entire world.

There may be good reasons why the increasingly autocratic President Yameen is not interested in climate change: he has announced plans instead to drill for oil underneath the Maldives pristine coral reefs.

A coalition of 20  environmental NGOs have pleaded the plan to be halted, but in August last year a German research ship  ironically in the area to supposedly study global warming’s effect on the oceans – was recruited to conduct the first seismic oil explorations.Yameen has demonstrated a past fondness for oil. 

During the long-running dictatorship of his half-brother Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Yameen was allegedly involved in sanctions-busting oil trading with the Burmese military.
source@maldivesindependent.com