STELCO Employee Suspended For Claiming That President Solih Is Uneducated

A State Electric Company (STELCO) employee who wrote an insulting remark regarding President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has been suspended from his job.

Ilyas Aboobakuru, who works as a driver for STELCO, was suspended from his job for making “unsubstantiated, false remarks regarding officials of the State and the management of the Company” as per a document released by STELCO regarding the suspension. The document stated that the disciplinary board was looking into the matter as Ilyas’ comments “soiled the Company’s name”.

Ilyas has been suspended from work beginning November 21 until the disciplinary inquiry was complete.

Ilyas had written remarks on his social media feed regarding President Solih’s lack of educational qualifications beyond Secondary School. Ilyas said that he had voted for President Solih in 2018, he said that the President “turned out to be a worse person than [he had] thought”.

On the campaign trail in 2018, as a presidential candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had vowed to not fire state employees who had expressed their political views. However, several people had been dismissed from their jobs for making public remarks against the government since Solih’s inauguration.