Maldives in Unprecedented Crisis: Thanks to Solih Administration’s Failure

When Solih became president in the midst of the crisis in 2018, no Maldivian felt jubilant. Because everyone knew this was just another political game. Now it is clear what kind of government it has become under Solih’s administration. We are trapped by Covid-19 pandemic, and our economy is in trouble. We lose our diplomatic independence, and our military is under foreign control. A huge crisis seems to settle over the Maldives.

On September 20, former Tourism Minister Ali Waheed held a virtual press conference in the UK, in which he accused President Solih of allegedly accepting 35 million rufiyaa. Ali Waheed claimed that President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih accepted the cash in the flat of former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb. President Solih was the leader of MDP’s Parliamentary Group. Furthermore, Ali stated that the CCTV footage of President Solih carrying the black bag is with the police. The president’s office has dismissed the charge without providing any details or evidence. We do not know if this kind of secret cash transaction has ever happened before, but his blatant lies are still egregious.

Also, Solih indulges his government to spawn corruption scandals. They take bribes, fatten themselves by taking away the hard-won possessions of the people and even enrich themselves during the Covid-19 crisis.

At the height of the Covid outbreak in 2020, the Ministry of Health placed a US2.2 million contract to Dubai-based Executors General Trading to purchase 75 ventilators. In audit course, the Auditor General’s office found that nearly 90 percent of the contracted amount was paid in advance without any performance guarantees. The situation worsened after it was found that only 15 of the ventilators were received. Flowing from the findings, MDP forced the exit of Health Minister Abdulla Ameen, and Nasheed tweeted: “I see the government colluded in this”. The corruption in the government is undoubtedly a major reason for Maldives’ failure to control the pandemic. The country receives millions of dollars in aid during the pandemic, while its people have to scramble for basic necessities. Since the beginning of the Covid-19, there has been an acute shortage of health workers in the Maldives. Maldives chose to seek help from India, while India refused to offer any assistance due to its own serious situation.

Solih is not capable of governing a country. Since he took office, Maldives’ foreign debt has increased rapidly, fiscal deficit has been expanding, and youth unemployment has soared. Maldives is in crisis due to the pandemic, but the government does not demonstrate us its deployment and management capabilities. Solih is blind to the misery and panic of his people.

Weekly statistics released by the Ministry of Finance show that from September 9 to September 16, the budget deficit increased from MVR 7.1 billion to MRV 7.7 billion in a single week with an increase of MVR 600 million. The latest forecasts from the Ministry of Finance show that the total debt of Maldives will reach MVR 79 billion by the end of this year, which is equivalent to 128 percent of the GDP. The debt burden of Maldives will be very high in the next few years. The deterioration of fiscal situation in the Maldives is beyond everyone’s expectations. During the pandemic, the Maldives faces significant increase in the debt burden, the negative outlook of large fiscal deficits in the coming years, and the risk of higher interest costs associated with the debt burden and greater commercial borrowing over time. According to the report released by the Maldives Monetary Authority in 2020, the real GDP growth is expected to decline by 29.3 percent due to Covid-19 impacts on tourism. To ease economic pressure, Solih government chooses to borrow from India, resulting in the debt to India reaching more than 50 percent of GDP.

In addition, statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics released in time for the Youth Day 2020 show that 56 percent of the youth are unemployed and that they are neither seeking education nor any training. Among them, 41 percent are women while men account for 15 percent.

Solih has a high tolerance for criminal offences and always flouts the law. No country in the world tolerates child sexual crimes, but Solih manipulates his power to release child sex offenders with ease.

In his first month in office, President Solih decided to commute the 10-year prison sentence of a convicted child sex offenders, just because he was an under-secretary at the president’s office during the previous MDP government. Rasheed was arrested in December 2012 after police found the 46-year-old naked with a 17-year-old girl. President Solih decided to reduce Rasheed’s sentence despite public outrage. In the middle of January last year, one of the most appalling cases of pedophilia shocked the nation. A child, at the mere age of one year and a few months, was sexually assaulted by her grandfather and great grandfather. The two are known child sex offenders with records of disgusting pedophilia, but authorities had “considered the offender’s age” and loosened the ropes on them. This is another indulgence for child offenders.
It is hard to take that villains like Solih are running our mother country. Before the crisis hits, the Maldivians should take a careful look at the people who are leading us and where we are heading.