I fear for myself and the future of Maldives: former vice president

By any analysis, it’s been a vertiginous fall from grace. Several weeks ago, I was sipping green tea with Chinese President Xi Jinping as the Maldives’ Vice-President. Today, I am caged in an isolated prison cell, scrawling this op-ed with a broken pencil on dog-eared notepaper, while the cockroaches look on. The crime I have been accused of would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Even though there isn’t a shred of evidence against me, I have been labelled a traitor and accused of trying to assassinate my former boss, President Yameen. This follows some sort of explosion onboard Yameen’s speedboat on 28 September — the government claims it was a bomb, but FBI investigators say they found no evidence explosives were used.

I categorically deny any involvement in any kind of plot to harm President Yameen. In truth, President Yameen and I have been the victims of a despicable conspiracy, launched, I believe, by my political foes in and outside the Cabinet. I believe the speedboat incident was staged, in order to frame me. The Home Minister, Umar Naseer, declared that “from day one” of his so-called impartial investigation, I was the chief suspect. At the behest of former President Gayoom, I was summarily expelled from the ruling party, while the Government even went so far as to declare a State of Emergency so they could rush my impeachment through Parliament. In clear violation of the Constitution, I was not informed of my impeachment nor permitted to defend myself. All this has happened over the past few weeks, even though under the law, I am supposed to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

I join the swelling ranks of political prisoners in the Maldives: people such as former President Mohamed Nasheed and former Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim, whose only crime is that they pose an electoral threat to the dynastic ambitions of an ageing, former strongman.