Mdp is hijacked

MDP was formed with a noble cause. This noble cause has three principles. They are to promote democracy and rule of law, to advocate for press freedom, and, most importantly, to run as a political party based on policies and ideologies unlike PPM where loyality lies with one person.

During the former president Nasheed's administration we did not see his regime trying to uphold any of these principles.

After coming to power, Nasheed distaced himself from the leadership of MDP and was doing on his own. The party's elected president has sidelined. He never listened to him or took advices from him. Literally, Dr Ibrahim Didi, although the top political figure of the party, had no say in how the regime's policies.

In sharp contrast to Maumoon's last years in presidency, instead of making efforts to improve the democratic system newly established in the country Nasheed wanted to bring all powers under his control.

He stripped the people power from the atoll councils by establishing national centres to dictate things for them and placed these national centres under his command. He did nothing to create awareness of people in the democractic values or training the local councillors who are new to the system.

He strongly held close to his choices and pushed the wishes to his close associates despite the people's anger. Examples are allowing intoxicants in local areas, Israel flights, Addu monuments, Dhivehi Islam options, etc.

During his tenure as president he showed little respect for rule of law. Many cases were being filed at courts against the government for violating the laws. Some examples are MBC, ACC's Luthufy, GMR's 25 dollar, civil servants' salary, etc.

When he came to power the state TV and radio were maturing as public broadcasters under independent editorialship but he installed his puppets there and started propagandas to promote government's views. Instead of promoting freedom of press he tried to bring them under his control by refusing to respect the public broadcasting law passed by the parliament.

Today we see the worst of all. MDP has become another PPM. We used to say PPM stands for Private Property of Maumoon. The sad thing is, today many people have no choice but to believe that MDP is a private property of Nasheed and his gang. The party's elected positions are disfunctional and they have no say concerning the party policies.

MDP needs to strength internal democracy to empower people's power but today's leadership, especially the unelected Chairperson, does not have any interest to reform the party for fear they will lose their power in the party. Reeko has appointed as chairperson for a temporary term but it seems his post is permanent now. In appointing Reeko for the post the governing rule of MDP has been clearly violated.

Is it democratic when an unelected chairperson have a stronger voice over the party president elected by all members in the party? But Nasheed's and his gang want it to remain that way for personal reasons. Today we see Nasheed and Reeko talking on behalf of the party when the governing regulation of the party clearly says the political head of the party is its president.