May 21, 2023

It's time for independents to grace the occasion!

Those of us in our senior years have seen both sides of our country’s political life in our maturity and it’s valid to say that Maldives needs a major paradigm shift in its governance approach. While we have espoused and endorsed the values of democracy on paper, we don’t see it in our offices, on our streets and most importantly, in the halls of our nation’s power. It all seems a charade played out in wilful ignorance to keep the hapless public still steeped in ignorance of this concept called democracy.

For the past 15 years of this so-called democracy in Maldives, we have witnessed heinous crimes perpetrated in the name of democracy; Western or otherwise. We have ransacked our nation into debt and poverty by looting our exchequer of whatever liquidity it had and our haloed governor positions being usurped by nefarious forces of the dark.

My dear citizens of this beautiful paradise on earth, we can save this our home for the future only by moving away from the ingrained ways of corruption we have so insidiously adopted. And yes, make no mistake; our salvage can’t be re engineered by the minds that created this heinous strife in the first place. It needs new minds and new approaches. Please, please let me implore our independent minds to rise up and save our nation from this yoke of legitimised kleptocracy functioning in our land in the name of democracy. This charade of political parties and their nebulous coalitions can’t save us. It’s like they are merely rearranging the same furniture in the living room every five years, to make us believe it is now different.

It’s the independents who have the power to change this nation. New faces and new ways to govern must be crafted to fit our local sensibilities. Revolutionary approaches bring lasting changes (please refer to the pages of the book: A nation in Peril: Blighted by Failed Governance, ENDEVOR-Maldives  publication, 2022. Kindle version also available) . We surely need to change the curtains in the room. The democracy we have, while valid indeed in construct, we don’t have to pay absolute homage to an alien construct crafted to the needs of another culture. Do we have to be like the West by hook or by crook? Not really! And we should also not allow our vanity to fool us. Let me also, while lauding the idea of global cooperation, say that globalisation has no meaning when we are all fitted into a straight-jacket. Just like unity is strength, variety still continues to be the spice of life.

I thus venture to say please, my dear comrades in our common community, let's look at the common challenges ahead of us and attempt coming to common terms (Al- Imran 64 tells us just that!). It’s time to come together to allay the evil behemoth of the “Silent Whisperer” to bring about a truly new Maldives that will re-embrace and celebrate the warmth and resilience of our two thousand or more years of common history.

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