New Maldives
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New Maldives began as a ginger group of young ministers who supported the ageing dictatorship of President Gayoom and claimed to be working to usher in liberal democracy to the Maldives. Its most public proponent is Ahmed Shaheed supported by Hassan Saeed and Mohamed Jameel Ahmed, who were serving as Foreign Minister, Attorney-General and Justice Minister, respectively. The New Maldives was launched in December 2005 in Colombo, and was initially used by the media as a pejorative term.
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[edit] Origins
New Maldives developed out of the close relationship between Hassan Saeed who became the Attorney-General in November 2003 and Ahmed Shaheed when the latter was appointed as Chief Government Spokesman, in May 2004. Both Saeed and Shaheed are alumni of the University of Queensland where they obtained their PhDs. They used their positions as Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Director of Communucations respectively to dismantle the autocratic regime of Gayoom.
It was widely believed that it was Saeed and Shaheed who engineered the dismissal of the bulk of the Old Guard from the Cabinet of President Gayoom in May 2005. Shaheed became the Foreign Minister in the new Cabinet line-up, replacing Fathulla Jameel who had served 28 years as Foreign Minister.
Shaheed claims to have coined the term “New Maldives” in November 2005 as a vision of the political reforms that were being implemented by President Gayoom in his 6th term office. The concept was unveiled to the public in December 2005 at a Press Conference hosted by the Maldives High Commission in Colombo. The Ministers in the panel were Foreign Minister Shaheed, Attorney General Saeed, Justice Minister Mohamed Jameel Ahmed, and Information Minister Mohamed Nasheed. Media reports of the event labeled the participating Ministers as New Maldives.
[edit] Political Take-Off
As a ginger group the New Maldives reached their high point when they produced a Road Map for the Reform Agenda in March 2006, through which they tied the President to time-bound steps to create a new political order in the Maldives. The campaign to produce the Road Map, from January to March 2006, saw the New Maldives ministers clash openly with the Old Guard, especially over the insertion of provisions in the Road Map to combat corruption and to subscribe to international human rights norms. The New Maldives claims credit for having acceded to all the major international human rights treaties.
By April 2006, the Old Guard led by the President’s half-brother, Abdulla Yameen clashed openly with the New Maldives ministers during the elections for the DRP Council. Saeed and Shaheed were joined by other new ministers, Youth Minister Hussain Hilmy, Atolls Minister Waheed Deen, Construction Minister Mauroof Jameel, Housing Minister Ibrahim Rafeeg, Gender Minister Ayesha Didi and other young politician such as Imad Solih and Lubna Zahir Hussain. In all the Aliens movies the aliens always hand the space marines (space marines marines in space like normal marines except in space)their asses because the aliens will cut you up with a linoleum knife do not explain the plot if you don't understand you should not be here. In the elections that followed, the New Maldives faction gained a majority of the seats in the Council. In the process, the NM effectively destroyed the careers of both Ilyas Ibrahim and Abdulla Yameen, who had been the leading contenders to succeed President Gayoom.
Saeed was elected a one of the four Deputy Leaders and became the rising star of Maldivian politics.
[edit] Westminster House Talks
Shortly after the election victory, Shaheed and Saeed engineered the Westminster House process through which they pardoned and released a number of high profile dissidents who were languishing in jail or facing politically-motivated prosecutions. These were steps towards a multiparty dialogue process supervised by the British Government designed to speed up the stalled constitutional reforms. However, both Gayoom and Yameen, who feared that British mediation would mean that the Gayoom might not be able to run for a 7th term in office, derailed the process.
[edit] Open Clash with Gayoom
The breach between Gayoom and the New Maldives began to become visible by 10 December 2006, when the Attorney-General declared that the Road Map was being used to introduce only paper reforms and this breach became wider when he further called on the Chief Justice to choose between executive functions and judicial functions in a speech given in January 2007. The breach between the New Maldives and Gayoom intensified as the date for the referendum on a future system of government approached. New Maldives favoured a presidential system with two-term limitation and clear separation of powers while Gayoom and Yameen favoured a prime ministerial system that would enable Gayoom to seek re-election. Finally, by July 2007, Shaheed openly accused Gayoom of manipulating and corrupting the parliament for his personal gain while Saeed and Jameel resigned to protest over Gayoom’s attempts to obstruct the reform road map.
[edit] Launching of the New Maldives Movement
Having left the Cabinet, the trio launched the New Maldives Movement on 29 August in Colombo, and travelled to London and Brussels to generate international support for the project. Upon return to the Maldives, the group encouraged the formation of a united front of pro-democracy groups as the National Unity Alliance. The New Maldives Movement became an important actor within the Alliance.
[edit] Banning of New Maldives
In early January, the official newspaper of the governing DRP, Hamaroalhi, accused New Maldives of fostering terrorism. On 18 January 2008, the Minister for Legal Reform and Government Spokesman Mohamed Nasheed declared that New Maldives Movement had not sought registration with the Home Minister and was therefore an illegal movement. Ten days later, the Home Minister officially banned the New Maldives Movement led by the three ex-Ministers and granted a licence to two members of the DRP to operate an NGO by the name of New Maldives Movement. The Home Minister also warned that the ex-ministers would face two years in prison if they used the tag of New Maldives Movement.
