This Week in Maldives: January 15

Because, in hindsight, it should’ve been called The Weekly Panic; this week I look at Maumoon’s absent hard drive, Medam’s clean chit, Police buries the truth – and some useful advice about evil Sun worshippers. 

These are short takes on the headlines of the week gone by.

Couple in mysterious death buried

To recap: A young couple in their forties were found dead in their bedroom in Malé with seemingly no signs of struggle or violence. Within hours, the police ruled their deaths to be “of natural causes”.

For two young people to die of ‘natural causes’ in the same room, in each others arms, and at the same time is about as statistically improbable as Riyaz Rasheed being entirely sane.

No autopsy was carried out.

“In this particular case, the family did not want an autopsy, and the police have chosen not to do them based on that and on what we know so far”, said the Police.

In other words, we’ll never find out what happened.

Adhaalath Party to boycott local council elections

The local council elections, originally to be held this month, are now scheduled for 8 April 2017.

So far, the regime courts have postponed the elections because the PPM goonda faction wasn’t ready. And the regime-controlled Parliament amended electoral laws to ban people from running for positions if they lose a party primary.

And on top of that, the Elections Commission decided to annul the candidacies of about 900 candidates for no real reason.

Good on Adhaalath for boycotting this circus. I have no idea why the Maldives United Opposition – aka MDP and those three other dudes – continues to engage in this farce.

Maldives Independent reviews biography of Mohamed Waheed

Amazing. I couldn’t even get through 5% of the book.

Internet networks suffer DDoS attacks

Dhiraagu and Ooredoo networks crawled to a halt this week. It was either DDoS attacks, or the housing ministry took over broadband services for a while. All I know is, I lost four days of productivity.

Trial commences in case of Maldivian man murdered in Sri Lanka

The Maldives Criminal Court started proceedings against a local businessman accused of financing a hit-job on Hussain “Rabarey” Razeen, who was found dead in a remote ditch in Sri Lanka in late 2015, with multiple stab wounds.

Within a few days, Sri Lankan police apprehended the alleged murderer and the vehicle used during the crime. They also identified the Maldivian businessman who orchestrated the murder. They further established that a total sum of 140 million Sri Lankan rupees was offered for the hit job, and revealed the details of the monetary transactions and messages exchanged between the two.

They even revealed the motive to be vengeance for a murdered relative.

In contrast, it took the Maldives Police Service 29 hours just to reach journalist Rilwan’s apartment after he was reported missing. It would take another 11 days for them to find his office, and 603 days to confirm that he was indeed abducted.

That stellar track record, of course, is despite eye-witnesses actually reporting the abduction to the police within minutes of it happening.

It’ll soon be an year since the last update we ever received about Rilwan’s abduction from the Best Police Force In The Region™.

Image source: Eddny Cha X Hym (Yeah. I don’t know either)

Government will not tax solar panels after all

An unnamed “senior official” at the Energy Authority has refuted last week’s reports that the regime was about to introduce a fee on solar panels.

As an environmentalist, I am relieved.

On the other hand, as a deeply paranoid Maldivian with wildly fluctuating aqeeda, it made me wonder: could this indicate that our government has come under the influence of shady foreign powers? By refusing to charge a tax on sunlight, are they secretly trying to appease the Sun worshippers?

We can never tell for sure. Fellow Dhivehin, please inspect your children’s textbooks for any pictures of the Sun god. Be careful, though. Your Maldivian aqeeda is like a kidnapped hooker locked up in the basement, and will escape given the slightest chance. Avoid looking directly at the the Sun, or any illustrations of this pagan deity.

Remember: never let your guard down, not for a second. These nefarious sun worshippers are out to destroy our precious dheen.

Foreigners trying to introduce other religions in the Maldives: Home Minister 

Sigh.

First lady launches Yameen’s 2018 re-election campaign

Brace yourself. More #rangalhu tweets and fugly billboards coming your way.

ACC dismisses multiple corruption allegations against First Lady

The Anti Corruption Commission ruled that it was fine for the First Lady’s ‘charitable’ Sadaqat Foundation to re-label and distribute boxes of dates originally donated by the Saudi king to the Maldives, because it allowed the dates to be “distributed more quickly”.

I am not sure if the primary argument against corruption is that it is less efficient. But what do I know?

The ACC also ruled that even though the woman labeled the dates with stickers from her own foundation, it wouldn’t confuse anybody. Because “everyone knows” that the dates came from Saudi Arabia as a gift from the monarch.

The problem is that “everyone knows”, for instance, that it was indeed a certain Supreme Court justice in those videos having sex with hookers. “Everyone knows” also what happened to the MMPRC funds, and who is at the helm of all corruption.

“Everyone knows” there’s no good reason why the ACC members should be bribed with luxury apartments.

And “everyone knows” that, even if everyone knows, the law still needs to take its course for it to mean anything. Which is why we originally decided we want oversight bodies like ACC to be independent.

Gayoom questioned over missing hard drive

The missing hard drive is thought to have contained the membership registry of the party that is now caught up in bitter factional disputes.

In a tweet, Maumoon said the police “visited me in my office today & asked me if I knew anything about the missing PPM hard disk…”

And then in the following tweet, “I told them I know nothing”.

Malé city councillor arrested on bribery charge

(tldr; He supported the wrong PPM)

Malé City pavements get temporarily Muizzed

It is almost like Muizzu wants to be featured in my weekly round up.

This week, someone posted pictures to social media showing that the new pavements on Majeedhee Magu were no longer disabled-friendly, unlike the old ones.

Image source: Ahmed Afaal

In a classic Muizzu move, he completely denied all allegations that the new pavements he built weren’t disabled-friendly.

Amusingly, the pictures that accompanied his denial were of workers fixing the pavements to make them un-Muizzed once again.

Majeedhee magu pavement ge ‘disabled access’ thah nagamun dhaa vaahaka akee mulhin hageegathaa khilaaf vaahaka thakeh. pic.twitter.com/AzdJwDYJVb

— Dr.Mohamed Muizzu (@MMuizzu) January 9, 2017

School recalls textbooks after controversy over pictures of churches

Miadhu, a local “news” website, carried the headline “Hulhumalé Gateway School – a gateway to turning Maldivians to Christians?”

I bet the editor who wrote that headline was mighty pleased with that clever word play.

I imagine his thought process went something like: ‘Gateway school? You mean *giggle* a “gateway” to turning all Maldivians into C-CH-here it comes-CHRISTIANS!” *wink* *wink* Geddit? Gateway? GAAATEWAY. Pardon my exceeding wit. I have outdone myself yet again! Now where’s that publish button, I must share this with the world at once!’

Unfortunately, I am no Rita Skeeter. All I could manage was, “Miadhu – a good day to start practicing actual journalism?” 

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but the answer is clearly a disappointing ‘No’.