Way to go Mr. President :)

Minivan News brings you the first part of two interviews with the spokespersons for the incumbent and former presidents. We ask both the same seven questions. In the first of two exclusive interviews, Mohamed Hussein Shareef (Mundhu) reflects on transitional justice, extremism, the government's biggest blunder and his advice to President Mohamed Nasheed.

Do you think there’s a need for transitional justice in the country?

If by transitional justice you mean putting the former government on trial, there are two ways of looking at it. Number one, I believe that if this was done through an institution, like in some other countries, it would be okay. But the very fact is the minute there’s even the slightest influence by the incumbent government, then questions will obviously be raised. The issue we have with how things are going on at the moment has less to do with justice being served, just like Mr Nasheed said last week rather ironically, I am sure the former president would not want a case where he can’t defend himself in court. But not when he gets his stooges to compile a report. When Hussein Rasheed Ahmed who’s gone to court to prove that he’s [Gayoom] not a Muslim, when Haseen who made a living by calling him everything under the sun, when you have a commission that’s appointed by the president with this sort of membership, clearly we don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to come up with an impartial or fair judgement. Period.

So it’s the process that’s the problem. How it’s being conducted. If it was the Anti-Corruption Commission doing this and the Anti-Corruption Commission that had actually investigated rather than Ali Shiyam investigating this, then obviously we have to take it seriously as well. But if it’s a president commission and we believe operating outside their legal remit and that’s why I use the word extrajudicial, that’s why we have concerns about this.
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The second issue here is less to do with legal implications or the legitimacy of such an action but rather political obligation and going forward as a country. We have to ask ourselves, each one of us, regardless of which side of the political divide we’re on whether it’s the right thing to do at this point. Because I can remember you asking me some time back about truth and reconciliation. The reality here is that there was no Apartheid, this is not South Africa.

The bottom line is does it do any good? Does it bring peace and harmony to the country or does it widen the divide that already exists and when we come to the point where as a society, a very small society, we are at loggerheads with each other, brother and sister, mother and father. And I believe that we are on the road to this. There’s very little communication with the government and the opposition now. We believe the actions of the government play a huge part in arriving at this position. We believe this witch-hunt will only widen the disparity between the two sides. I believe the fundamental difficulty Nasheed faces today is the stark reality that he isn’t a majority government.

What do you think this government’s worst mistake has been so far?

Fundamentally, that he’s started to act as if he has overwhelming support in the country. That he thinks he commands a level of respect where he can ignore the minority, entirely sideline them and carry on. He could probably do that if he had 51% of support but he doesn’t. The second is that I believe a lot of mistakes they are making are because the MDP government is following Assad [state minister for finance] and Assad’s talk of PPPs [public-private partnerships]. Everybody seems to be in an Assad spell in the government. Everybody seems to think this guy’s brilliant. He’s some kind of an economic genius. All his talk about partnership of this sort or that sort. We’ve been in government, believe me. We’ve gone through all the pros and cons. I’m an economist as well and it’s just not going to work. That formula is flawed. The idea that people from abroad are going to come and everything’s going to be rosy in six months. It’s not going to happen and there is no Plan B.

All credit to Nasheed for backing his ministers up but you know it’s very flawed. The worst mistake you can make is to follow a flawed economic policy. Famous saying nobody really cares about human rights on an empty stomach. You’ve got to feed them first and it’s only then that they’ll start thinking about everything else. If the economy’s not in good shape, he’s in trouble.

The third is the problem is that he’s very loyal to his party supporters and those who tried hard to get him into office and therefore he feels he has to repay their loyalty. The reality is that 95 per cent of these people are simply not qualified to be in government. Most of them are semi-educated. They’re just not the right people. However loyal somebody is, if they’re not qualified, educated or even worldly-wise enough, it’s just not going to cut it.

Look at all these councillors, a lot of them probably can’t even write their own name in English. How’s he going to run the island? He’s put a lot of trust in his supporters to repay them for what they did, but in the process he’s ruining his government. No technocrats and instead it’s activists.

What do you think his greatest asset is as a politician?

Committed. Nasheed is committed and daring. In the sense that his right hand man can tell him, Your Excellency, this is not the right thing to do, he’d probably laugh and just go ahead. You think sometimes because of his mannerism that he’s not a very serious guy but he is; he’s smart. He wouldn’t be president of the Maldives if he was an idiot.

In all seriousness, culturally, he’s not a very comfortable fit. I always said that Nasheed’s strength is activism. That he’d make the best populist leader in a country. He’s far more at ease leading a demonstration than being stuck in a chair doing the boring work of signing documents. It’s just not his thing.

It would be the same for Gayoom. Imagine Gayoom leading a demonstration. It wouldn’t look too pretty, would it? He’s more statesman and less politician. Nasheed is all politician and not a very good statesman. Maybe the MDP could have elected as president somebody who’s more palpable to the people. Probably a little bit more moderate in what he says and what he does, in his demeanour, his behaviour. More acceptable to our society. This guy is just essentially a radical. Radical may be good for some of us but in the islands, they find it shocking. Frankly, I think his greatest asset is that he’s very loyal to the party.

If you/Gayoom could offer him just one piece of advice, what would it be?

My advice to Nasheed is go back to being an activist, a human rights activist. He’d go down in history as having done something. He’s currently in a role that doesn’t fit. There are probably other people in the MDP who’d do a better job. Dr Waheed comes across as being a more polished president material. Nasheed just doesn’t look the part and if they’re serious about coming back to power in four years maybe they need to find a new candidate. Nasheed can probably be their godfather who they look up to and would be the party leader, which is something far more comfortable.

The constitution says he’s everybody’s president but we find it hard to accept him as a leader who’d do things for our benefit or good. He’s so partisan. Often Maumoon Abdul Gayoom got a lot of stick from our own people that he doesn’t employ loyalists. Because he realised that there are portfolios for which you need specialised people. But imagine if he makes me finance minister, it’s just not my area, I’d probably mess it up. So regardless of how loyal I am, he’d still give it to someone more qualified.

Maybe that’s what led to his downfall that some of his ministers weren’t very loyal but he realised that was a prerequisite to run a government smoothly. So it was not very partisan. I mean Naseem [state minister of foreign affairs] was a minister, Zaki [special envoy to the president] was a minister. We knew they weren’t very loyal. But he saw the need to also employ their services. It wasn’t a really blue government. Case in point, a lot of them are probably still in government and in higher positions now. I don’t think Nasheed can run the show with only yellow people.

What do you think the biggest threat facing the country is?

Fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism. I’ve always said it. MDP didn’t help us at all because this is an issue that I always thought, the MDP being the liberal organisation that it claims to be, would see eye to eye with us on. We often talked about the rising threat and the need to address this issue before it spreads, but it would always be politicised. There were known terrorists and when we named them MDP would say they’re not terrorists, they’re religious scholars. If we say black, the MDP had a habit of saying white, regardless of whether they were issues that we could see eye to eye on.

But we didn’t get a lot of help from the MDP at that point and clearly, tagging Adhaalath Party along doesn’t help because Adhaalath are a huge threat to our society because they aren’t the moderate types that they claim to be and they often turn a blind eye to a lot of things that they shouldn’t and the government really should reconsider its role. And also by having Adhaalath so close to the MDP and the government i.e. giving the ministry and sole charge of all religious affairs to Adhaalath...it’ll come back and bite him.

We were accused of politicising religious but I think MDP are doing a far better job of politicising religion than us. We just had a president who was a scholar, that’s it, period. But now it’s the case that all scholars are free to say whatever they want and really there’s very little monitoring about what they say, what they do and what they preach. The government needs political support and it’s giving Adhaalath a free hand which is regrettable.

Do you think religious extremism will ever take root in the Maldives? [Mundhu pre-empted this question with his previous answer]

Climate change is considered to be one of the threats to the Maldives. Do you think President Nasheed should ask Gayoom to be the country’s climate change ambassador?

I think Nasheed’s climate change policy is very vulgar. There’s a fundamental, irreparable difference in the environment policy that they MDP government is pursuing and what Gayoom personally championed for 20 years and that became very apparent on day one when they said we’re going carbon neutral. We can do it in 10 years. To me, Nasheed’s environmental policy is based on purely on the PR value.

I know as a leader in the Maldives it’s very easy to get on the front page of papers if you talk about the environment. It’s very easy. It’s the Maldives. Every journalist’s dream destination to cover climate change. But there’s a find line between reaping maximum media PR benefits and actually really caring about the issue. Because I know for a fact that the real experts within the government were not consulted, were in fact sidelined, and this is purely a political decision.

And I’ll tell you who’s at the heart of this, our old friend Dr Shaheed. It’s a very simple case of Shaheed going and telling Anni, look Nasheed, here’s our opportunity to shine on the global stage. I’ll lead you, you follow, you’ll become a hero. But then has he ever stopped to think if this is even remotely possible? This particular issue, I was one of the core authors of our manifesto and the environmental policy manifesto, and one of the issues that we really played around with, was whether, just like Costa Rica, we too could go carbon neutral anytime in the foreseeable future. Even 50 years. But we came to the conclusion that it just isn’t possible. We rely too heavily on fossil fuels, it’s not the right thing to do, it’s fine reducing the fossil fuel dependence but it’s a stage by stage process.

But what we’re doing now, we’re basically lying. We’re misleading the global environmental community in my view and that’s vulgar to me. The facts that are being given to them have been distorted, the reality is completely the opposite of what Nasheed is saying. They have not done anything concrete. I’ll give you an example. The hybrid energy projects we started. Why does this government not take it seriously? We proved it was feasible. Just carry on because Baraah and the other island, they actually cut down on their generator usage by about 15 per cent in three months and it was something that we could duplicate on any island. In fact, you don’t even need space; you could even do it in the lagoon.

There were many projects they could have followed on. The reality is the climate change policies that Gayoom championed are not what is being followed. And we’re not making any friends in the small island states organisations or the G77 by acting how we’re acting at the moment. Even the environment is becoming politicised. Whatever Britain says we go ahead with it. Whatever gives him the maximum number of hits on Google news. That’s not the right thing to do.

He’s clearly politicising Copenhagen now. So dramatic, it’s like an Indian drama where he says oh actually I’m not doing to go because there’s no money, it’s a very important conference and I’d love to go. But then he’s going to come and say everybody’s calling me up and saying you’ve got to be here, you’re so important, without you Copenhagen wouldn’t be the same, and he’ll say, they’re paying me to come and then he’ll go. Let’s talk sense here. Any Maldivian president calls up anybody across the world in environmental circles and says well I have no money to go to Copenhagen, they’ll be only too willing. The UN would be only too willing to pay for Nasheed’s visit. Not because he’s a great guy but because he’s president of the Maldives and the Maldives is, period, one of the most vulnerable countries in the world.

So he’s reaping maximum political benefit out of it. I don’t think Gayoom can help the environment policy of this government because it’s too much of a failure. Although having said that, he personally feels very strongly about the environment. That’s one of the reasons why he needs to have an office of the former president. That’s why he needs a budget to travel. It’s not for the medical purposes that he’s asking for a budget, it’s for the number of conferences. I’m his head of his foreign relations and I know the number of invitations he gets a day. Even with Copenhagen, half a dozen already from different organisations. What am I going to respond to them? Dear Sir, unfortunately, he doesn’t even get his pension, therefore he won’t be in Copenhagen. But having said that it would be very good for the country if he does go because there are a hell of a lot of people out there who respect his advice. Nasheed’s a novice to this. This is not his area. An Anna Lindh award doesn’t make you an environmental genius. Maumoon’s done this for 20 years whether you like it. But the reality is unless we have the funds we cannot go. And he’s going to talk about the environment and who does that help? Us.

Seriously??
I'm picturing 4 presidents in 20 years and what this country would have left in the treasury after that 20 years. Are you getting the picture?
Nevermind! i should keep my mouth shut on politics - i know!