This Week in Maldives: March 27

Because there is no such thing as a proportionate response in YAG’s arsenal, this week: Maumoon can’t catch a break, Nihan’s verbal diarrhoea, Maseeh survives the roll-call, and also my weekly update on Muizzu and his marbles.

No confidence motion against Speaker Maseeh defeated

Hoo-boy. How do I even summarize this one?

The opposition spent weeks hyping up their plans to remove the Majlis Speaker from his position. They made strong statements expressing absolute confidence about Maseeh’s removal, while seemingly disregarding things like.. basic arithmetic.

Think about it. The regime has a comfortable majority in Parliament – and there are literally zero people in the ruling party with any semblance of integrity or a spine to stand up to YAG’s bullying.

I am not even sure there’s enough money you could bribe those losers with to make them stick their neck out and face the regime’s wrath.

The day of the vote started on an ominous note. The viewing gallery was closed off to the public and independent observers. Police were beating back protesters gathered outside the Majlis building.

The regime had decided it couldn’t risk an electronic vote. (MPs have in the past ‘accidentally’ pressed the wrong button, after all)

So the electronic voting system was conveniently declared ‘broken’ that morning, and the ruling party leader MP Nihan proposed a vote by roll-call.

Also, because the regime doesn’t really give a fuck anymore, the matter of the broken electronic voting system was decided by an electronic vote – causing the chamber to erupt into total chaos.

The opposition cried foul, pointing out that the electronic vote tally was tampered with – it even registered a vote by MP Mahloof, who happened to be locked up in jail at the time of voting.

The results also showed a vote by the deputy Speaker “Reeko” Moosa Manik, who was presiding over the proceedings.

Reeko Moosa paid no heed. If anything, perhaps it only proved even further to him that the electronic voting system was indeed broken.

He declared the motion passed, and called for a roll-call.

In the end – after having the military evict 13 mostly opposition MPs from the chamber – the no confidence motion was defeated.

It was a hollow victory though.

Instead of projecting strength, the regime revealed itself to be completely rattled, spending two weeks on an all-out assault on perceived threats – targeting everyone from the media and Maumoon to the opposition and social media activists.

Criminal court threatens to take action against journalists

For some inexplicable reason, the court released a statement accusing journalists of “sowing strife and discord among the public”, “creating misgivings in the hearts of the people about the institutions and heads of Maldivian state”, and enabling “terrorism”.

It also threatened to take action against the media if they didn’t stop doing those “terrorism” things.

I don’t think the Maldivian state needs any additional assistance from the media in order to create misgivings in people’s minds. This court, for instance, has done an excellent job of exactly that by releasing random shit like this.

‘Mihaaru’ reporters barred from entering Criminal Court

Not sure why. But I have narrowed it down to either “terrorism” or journalism.

Maumoon expelled from PPM

To recap: the regime courts had already handed over control of the party to YAG months ago.

Then earlier this week, Maumoon was ‘removed’ from his position as the party’s president by the party council.

Sure, as Maumoon pointed out, the party’s constitution does not give the council any such powers. But what’s he going to do about it?

Later again, he was removed from the party membership altogether.

I can’t help but pity seeing the former strongman, who once made an entire country kneel before him, reduced to being so powerless within his own party.

To add to his humiliation, his son Ghassan Maumoon was forced to quietly participate in this ignominious drama of the party council. Oh, and his daughter continues to serve the regime too.

Ouch. 

Tax authority freezes accounts of Gasim’s Villa Shipping company

Entirely coincidentally, of course. Nothing to do with his withdrawal of support for the regime.

As it happens, Gasim mentioned a few days earlier that he believed the regime will “squeeze me like a lemon”.

The regime will need to get in line, though. I suspect there are some ladies who’d love to do just that.

Seriously. Have you seen Gasim lately? The man looks thirty years younger since the last time I paid any attention to him, and is now rocking a slick beard and new haircut. Hawt.

H1N1 outbreak claims six lives

With all the rest of the bullshit that was going on, the regime also was completely mishandling an H1N1 epidemic that has claimed six people’s lives so far.

The regime appears to have tried to keep the thing under wraps, but found out they couldn’t quite put a gag order on influenza.

Lots of miscommunication and misinformation later, flu clinics were set up, and hundreds of new cases were detected.

Schools were closed, then reopened, and then closed again after parents reacted furiously.

The flu outbreak is still ongoing, but on the bright side it provided a great pretext to once again delay the local council elections that the regime clearly doesn’t want to hold.

It has now been postponed to May.

Former police commissioner, coup leader and architect of the present police state Abdulla Riyaz arrested by police

hehehehe

PSM walls painted pink in colour

For some reason, the (tax-payer funded-) regime propaganda station painted their exterior walls in the ruling party’s pink colour.

I was personally very happy about this. It was the single-most honest bit of public expression I’ve seen coming from this station.

But then, following a public outcry, they painted over it again – and now it’s all blue. Oh well.

Islamic centre courtyard ‘rectified’

Muizzu claims to have ‘rectified’ the shitty tiles that he put up in front of the Islamic Centre in Malé as part of his ongoing war on good taste.

I was hoping Muizzu would be a third-time-lucky sort of guy, but I passed that way just this morning and noticed there are already visible cracks on the new ‘rectified’ version too.

Sigh.

LEAKED: Nihan audio-tapes on Saudi deal 

Technically, this happened the week before last – but it was just too good to not bring up.

PPM parliamentary group leader (and chronic motormouth-) Ahmed Nihan struck again.

An audio tape of him sharing “brain information”(?) leaked, where he spilled the beans on the whole murky deal surrounding the sale of Faafu atoll, the manner in which constitutional amendments were rammed through to please the filthy Saudi royals, the dirty money involved, the demands for secrecy,  and.. zooplankton, for some reason.

The brain information made very little sense, because Nihan seemed to suggest that the Saudi deputy Crown Prince was looking to evacuate an entire population merely to build himself a holiday home in which to spend a couple of weeks every year – whereas the regime has publicly claimed they expected investments of up to $16 billion.

Following the leaks, the Saudi monarch canceled his much-hyped trip, leaving the regime helplessly holding their dick as that massive $16 billion dollar boner slowly went limp.

The cancellation took place mere hours before he was due to arrive (the red carpets were literally rolled out, and traffic diversions were in place)

The regime, struggling for a believable explanation for this last minute cancellation, decided to announce that the tyrant with a traveling hospital and a team of doctors canceled his trip because there was a flu going around in Malé.

Hah. Right.

Social media activist thrown in jail

Thayyib Shaheem is known for tweeting juicy (but entirely unverifiable-) rumours about the regime’s murky deals, that nevertheless sometimes turn out to be true.

He had also recently made public accusations of an H1N1 cover up, and shared Nihan’s infamous “brain information” audio clips.

So, to be honest, I’d been flabbergasted every single day that Thayyib wasn’t in jail.

Now that the regime has finally put him behind bars, balance has been restored to my Universe, and I can sleep once again in peace completely reassured that we do indeed live under a full-blown dictatorship.