COLOMBO: The first democratically elected president in the Maldives goes on trial today on abuse of power charges, seven months after being toppled in what he calls a “coup d’etat” in the tourist paradise.
Former leader Mohamed Nasheed’s honeymoon with multi-party democracy ended in February when he was forced out in a police mutiny after he detained the chief criminal court judge on corruption allegations.
Once an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, Nasheed, 45, now faces up to three years in jail or banishment to a remote islet in the archipelago where tourists pay up to $12,500 a day for Robinson Crusoe-style holidays.
The former leader insists he was ousted in a “coup” involving his former deputy, Mohamed Waheed, who has since become president. “The coup has not yet been completed,” Nasheed said at the weekend after his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) staged a mass rally on the tiny capital island Male on Friday to denounce the charges against him.
Nasheed in January had criminal court judge Abdullah Mohamed arrested over corruption charges — a move that triggered weeks of opposition-led protests and his eventual downfall on February 7 after police mutinied.
Conviction as a result of his trial could disqualify Nasheed from contesting the next presidential elections — something he charged the new government is keen to do. But he said: “People will not allow the regime to steal the next election. A free and fair election is our over-arching goal.”
Pro-Western Nasheed, who won global attention as a campaigner against global warming, said he had “no chance of a fair trial, particularly in a case as political as this”.
The man who brought democratic reforms to the nation of 330,000 Sunni Muslims said he believed the nation’s judiciary was still loyal to his arch-foe Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Nasheed formed his MDP in exile but returned home to a hero’s welcome, sweeping 54 percent of the vote in the 2008 elections that ended Gayoom’s 30-year autocratic rule.
“You can bring down a dictator in a day, but it can take years to stamp out the remnants of his dictatorship,” Nasheed said, referring to Gayoom’s defeat in the nation’s first multi-party election.
AFP
