Friday, January 13, 2012
Complicity in Torture
Friday, October 21, 2011
Liberia & Libya: war, peace and hospitality
It was once 'Africa's finest hotel', says the security guard as we wander around the concrete carcass. The Ducor at the end of Broad Street in Monrovia played host to many of the great and the good in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and also the bad. The story goes that Idi Amin swam in the Ducor's swimming pool, his pistol still by his side.The views enjoyed by the guests at this 300-room hotel, built in 1959 by the Intercontinental Group, were spectacular. They still are, giving you an all-round view of Monrovia's peninsulas and port.
This old brochure shows the sleek hotel as it once was.
A gem in an African crown of hospitality - it was one of West Africa's thriving hotels, but by 1990 the last guest had checked out.
Liberia had sunk into civil war and fighters and looters were moving in. The stories were now of a haunted, derelict hotel. It stood over Monrovia as a symbol of the sad side-effects of civil war.

By 2003, Liberia had signed up for peace and by 2005 it had elected a new leader, Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. War had left Liberia behind, and all the talk was of reconciliation and reconstruction.
Eventually, the conversation turned to the Ducor's redevelopment. In January 2011, the vice presidenthanded over the site to the investment arm of the Libyan government, ready for a multimillion dollar refit. The Ducor was to be restored to its former glory.
Perhaps military strongmen may once again swim in the pool, pistols by their sides.
The squatters were moved on. Today, only Frank, the caretaker, and a handful of security guards remain to roam the hulk of the hotel. Workers ringed the site with a shiny new corrugated-iron wall.
But in February in Libya, the people began their revolt. Libya's $60 million investment in Liberia was at risk. By June, President Sirleaf had decided to cut ties with Gaddafi’s Libya and work stopped at the Ducor.

It was a hotel destroyed by war at home. Now, another war more than 6,000 kilometres away has dented the dream of its redevelopment.
And so the building stands... waiting for someone else to come up the millions needed to bring a grand old dame a much needed and deserved makeover to face an uncertain future.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Liberia's election: a test for peace
(First published here)The sign at Monrovia airport said four things: NO STANDING, NO LOITERING, NO URINATING, NO SELLING. I stood, loitering until our fixer arrived. I bought a sim card from the kiosk selling them. Nobody urinated.
We drove into Monrovia, through the tropical lush green land along the coast, past the many election campaign posters, past the health ministry being rebuilt by the Chinese, past the huge UN tower, headquarters for the staff of one of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping missions, cut from around 15,000 troops to 8,000.
“Monkey still working, let baboon wait small” reads one of the much-publicised posters from the ruling Unity Party of Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It is one of many slogans she is using as she seeks re-election, urging voters to stick with what they know, a tried-and-tested, six-year-old government that is still on a mission to transform the country. The opposition can wait their turn. Other billboards focus on the schools and roads she has built and the development she has brought. “Development: Da’ my area.”
The country is captivated. Every radio and television station talks of nothing but the October 11 elections. Will they be peaceful? Can we tackle corruption? Who is the best candidate? Will the vote be free and fair?
And it is the same on the streets. Waiting for print-outs of our passport photos, we stood in a Chinese-run store. One man taking part in a march for a peaceful election burst through the door. He delivered his message loudly to assembled customers. At the top of his voice, he spoke of the importance of the election and of peace. He excitedly told the people they had a free choice.
I choose the best candidate for me. That is my choice. My girl, she chooses the best candidate for her. This is only for her.”
His words reflect the rise of women’s rights in Liberia, spearheaded by President Sirleaf, and the hope for a free vote.
The customers express their scepticism and complain of the “aggressive” campaigning by some candidates. Election teams are distributing footballs, t-shirts, hats, badges, all sorts of paraphernalia adorned with their images, in the hope it will win them a vote.
“No one else could have done it better than we have,” President Sirleaf reportedly told a crowd on her campaign. She has tackled the painful legacy of war, working on reconciliation, development and corruption. She promised to govern for only one term but is now seeking a second. She says the task ahead is huge and she needs more than six years.
But her opponents say she has fallen short on tackling corruption, first and foremost. The main contender is Winston Tubman, who has teamed up with Liberia’s equivalent of David Beckham. George Weah is a football superstar who came second to Sirleaf in 2005, having polled better than her in the first round. They believe their brains-and-popularity combination is powerful.
“When I get up, they cheer,” says Tubman. “But when Weah gets up, they get excited. Kids three and four are jumping up and down, older people as well. It’s something magical to watch.”
On Monrovia’s main artery road, women lie on a football field, dressed in white, making the shape of a crucifix. They are fasting for one day and asking God for peace in “Mama Liberia”. They wail and weep and cry, “We’re tired. We want peace.”
The whole nation knows that this election, if it is concluded without a resort to violence, will be a huge milestone towards achieving that lasting peace. But it is also a serious flashpoint. This election is a challenge to which Liberia must rise. The alternative is a step backwards, towards conflict.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Britain: The underclass, the upper class and us
But not quite everybody was. On the edge of the crowd a few had slipped away. Our famous class-structure had mutated.
Cool!
By 1997, the working class struggle was over. Their riots were routed, their jobs had gone, and their time had passed.
So too had John Major’s. Confused conservatism was out. The grey man of politics was replaced by a red man. But this was New Red, not Old Red. Old Red Neil Kinnock went into the Eurocracy. New Red Tony Blair cultivated Cool Britannia, having won the votes of the middle class.
Workers’ unions were out. Tony told us ‘things can only get better’ and his ministers danced to the tune. He was young and he was not too posh. He made Britain cool and filled us with hope for a more dynamic future.
We put Union Jacks on our cushions and on the roofs of our cars. We listened to new music. It was like old music, but cooler. The pop stars went to Whitehall and drank in Downing Street. They sang about champagne supernovas and wonderwalls, country houses and charmless men.
Boom!
Poor people got a minimum wage, so they were happy too. Tony wrote to us in 1999 in the Sunday People: “Why I’ve Declared War On Welfare”. He told us about his “big programme of reform. But you and I know it's necessary.”
We did know. We needed to stop those single mums who have babies at 15 and live off our state. They were out. We needed to stop those asylum seekers living it up on our tax money. They should stay out.
By 2002, Gordon Brown was telling us, “We today in our country have economic stability not boom and bust.” He had allowed the Bank of England to set interest rates. His people told us this was a visionary move, which had set us on the path to permanent prosperity.
It was good to know. The ‘90s had been very expensive. Interest rates had spiralled and people had lost homes and businesses.
But that was history. So banks texted and emailed us, offering to lend. We took their credit cards and bought new things. The experts told us consumer spending was driving the economy, so we drove new cars. We were all consumers now.
Things were so good that people were coming from all around. The plumbers were all Polish! They were cheaper and better than the British ones. There weren’t any British ones anyway.
Toffs!
At the same time, Tony was stopping the toffs from hunting foxes. They needed to find better ways to spend their spare time. Despite a million people marching in defence of country life, Tony moved to ban fox hunting.
The House of Lords struck back. The ones who had inherited their seat voted against Tony’s plans. So he stopped them from being able to vote and moved to get them out altogether.
Being born into the Lords and fox hunting were the preserves of old conservatism, which was out. We were all middle class now.
Chavs!
Even TV was changing. Andy Warhol had said in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Now was the future. Reality TV was a revolution.
We watched Big Brother. We laughed at the contestants’ stupid behaviour and their ignorant comments. We witnessed people plucked from obscurity and made famous and rich. They lived a charmed life acquired for free.
On her way to winning Big Brother in 2002, Jade Goody declared the other contestants were "trying to use me as an escape goat." We laughed and were entertained. The phrase entered our slang dictionary.
But on her next journey into the Big Brother house Jade Goody was making someone else an ‘escape goat’. We were sickened by her victimisation of a Bollywood star. We felt it was racist. Her ignorance had gone too far.
Not long after the death threats, she got cancer. She then died slowly, while we watched her on TV and read about it in the newspapers and magazines. Perhaps this life of fame and luxury did not come for free.
But it did create a new path to prosperity. And it showed how Britain was a land of opportunity, where people and fortunes could be made overnight. We sneered. Others were inspired.
Another word had entered the slang dictionary of the middle classes: chav. Where had the word come from? Council House And Violent? Who knows? But here was the word for the subculture we loved to hate.
The ‘youth’ with the shaved hair, hood over his head, and pitbull terrier in tow was now a modern cliché.
Hoodies!
That youth worried us. The newspapers told us knife crime was spiralling out of control. We heard gun crime was more common now. We were told of postcode wars, where gangs fought for control of territory in our cities.
Tony’s war in Afghanistan wasn’t going too well either. And that had meant lots more heroin. Drugs supply was rising. We were worried about law and order.
The politicians stumbled across the idea of the ‘hoodie’. He was like the chav and sometimes the same. But he was more threatening.
Now crime had a face. We couldn’t see it, because it was hidden under this angry young man’s hood, but we knew it meant trouble.
One Tory MP and famous battle axe took herself off to learn more, while also making a TV programme called Anne Widdecombe vs The Hoodies. In 2006 she visited the Andover Estate near Kings Cross in London, and sought out what she called ‘the forgotten decents’ left to fend for themselves in a community under mob rule.
The locals said they had been vilified and painted with one brush because of where they lived and who they were. “I’ve tried to wear hoods less and less,” says one boy from the estate in a film made in reply, “because I realise people tend to stereotype a little bit.”
Hugs!
So while the kids tried to alter their wardrobes, the war on hoodies, but not the causes of hoodies, was stepped up. Opposition leader, now prime minister, David Cameron took on the issue in a now famous speech.
Hoodies, he said, could be dealt with using three principles. “Understanding what's gone wrong in order to put things right. Giving priority to the emotional quality of the work we do with young people. And giving real power to the real experts who can make the biggest difference.”
He was derided. The speech was boiled down to the slogan ‘hug-a-hoodie’ by the Labour government. One minister and attack dog called it “vacuous… wash-and-go politics.”
With the derision, the idea that we should "try and understand what's gone wrong in these children's lives” had died.
Asbo!
Instead, the only answer was to stamp out this antisocial behaviour by tackling it head on, we decided.
Tony had been trying, and had introduced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders or ASBOs back in 1999. They would stop kids from spitting, stealing, and shoplifting by telling them they couldn’t do it. If they did, they’d face a tougher punishment.
The idea failed. We thought it was a bit stupid and soft. Then we started reading about farmers getting ASBOs and angry grannies. Then it seemed kids were proud of their ASBOs which made them look tough and cool.
Eventually we gave up, and the children’s secretary Ed Balls said he wanted, "to live in the kind of society that puts ASBOs behind us." It was no good telling these kids what not to do, we thought. They had to be punished for doing it, or stopped in the first place.
We needed more coppers and they needed to be able to do their jobs. Then the experts said policemen were spending a ‘truly staggering’ amount of time doing paperwork, not being bobbies on the beat. So we needed to get the boys in blue back on the streets and away from their desks, like the good old days.
Crash!
Ten years into Tony’s journey, and he’d managed a few more big reforms to help make us all middle class.
We should all be graduates, or at least half of us, he insisted. So Tony made more university places. The universities said they couldn’t afford to pay for the extra students, even though the kids were now paying fees. Tony said the universities were exaggerating.
He said students could borrow money from companies to pay for their tuition, and put the price up. He’d taken it from free to £1,000 to £3,000. It wasn’t great, but it was okay because we could borrow the money from a company for now and pay it back later. We all had good prospects.
Tony also sold all the houses provided by the council to companies, so poor people could rent or buy them. We should all be homeowners, he’d said. And the banks had all said so too. So we borrowed to buy houses.
Then Tony said goodbye and the middle class masses waved him off.
But soon after we heard that a bank called Northern Rock was in trouble. Lots of people tried to get their money out and we had a run on the bank as if we were living in Argentina or somewhere.
Then it all got worse. Lehman Brothers went down. Lloyds TSB was in trouble. Then the government had to take over Bradford and Bingley. RBS and HBOS were next.
Scandal!
Soon we were hearing about plans ‘to pump billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into the economy.’ Just how many seemed unclear. A lot. Hundreds of billions. And it was our money, and for what? We hadn’t gambled it away. Maybe we had borrowed too much? We didn’t think so.
The answer seemed to lie in the city, where clever men had dreamt up ways to put lipstick on the pig of risky debt and call it safe debt. We realised, they had been paying themselves fortunes, millions of pounds to do so.
The papers began a narrative that’s familiar now, bashing the bankers for their greed. But before we could really take them to task, the Daily Telegraph had turned on the MPs. They had been cooking the books as well, fiddling their expenses and putting mortgages on the tab.
We were angry about it. And then one of them, Anthony Steen, said, “Do you know what it is about? Jealousy. I have got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral.”
• By 2010, the academics had worked out that Britain’s richest 10 per cent of people were more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10 per cent.
• A million young people between 16 and 24 years old are now out of work, one in five of them.
• Last year, the 1,000 richest people in Britain amassed 30 per cent more money than they had a year before. They owned £333.5 billion in total.
Plutocrats, us, scum.
We had created a parallel plutocracy and underclass. At the top of our society a new breed of super-rich were creaming off fortunes. They were making crazy money of the levels we had never dreamed of.
Chief executives were giving themselves huge pay rises far beyond inflation. Bankers were getting bonuses of millions of pounds and then fiddling it into untaxable share and stock options. They were driving around in Aston Martins, wearing Breitling watches and travelling with Louis Vuitton luggage to sail their luxury yachts in the Mediterranean.
And what’s more, they weren’t facing the music for fomenting the financial chaos.
Underneath us all was another class, the hoodies and the chavs, occupying an underworld.
Their antisocial behaviour was unstoppable. We read that they didn’t want to work. They wanted to get famous on reality TV. The girls wanted to have babies young and live off benefits, or marry footballers and live off them.
They were fighting postcode wars and stabbing each other on street corners in dark estates. They were stealing and dealing and fighting.
Like the Americans we are paying for our higher education, aspiring to be super rich, not regulating our businesses or taxing them too much and giving the police the power they needed to stop the criminal elements in our society. Like the Americans we are letting the rich get richer and the poor slip away.
We are fearing a vilified class that isn’t the super-rich and isn’t us. The underclass. The ones left behind, outside of our society.
London’s burning!
So when a new coalition government came in, led by the familiar Eton-Oxford cabal who rubbed shoulders with the plutocracy, they were not popular with the underclass.
And when they told those poor ten or twenty per cent that they had to pay more tax (especially value added tax, which costs them proportionately more than it does the rich) and they must receive less in return, that didn’t please them either.
And why must they pay more and get less? Because the plutocracy borrowed, gambled and lost too much, so much that it threatened our entire economy.
Mary Riddel, in her article “Riots: the underclass lashes out” outlines J K Galbraith’s causes of recession in his book, The Great Crash 1929: “bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance… All those factors are again in play.”
We’ve all roundly condemned these looters for their “mindless violence” and “sheer criminality”. But as Riddel writes, it is not sufficient “to heap contempt on the rioters as if they are a pariah caste.” They already are.
"To behave in this manner young people have to believe they have no stake in the neighbourhood, and consequently no stake in wider society," writes Stafford Scott.
Who represents this class of people in our politics now? The Tories and Labour look after the plutocrats and middle classes. But the poor? Nobody listens to them. Nobody represents them in our parliament. They have no party. They have no voice.
Become middle class, and you have a voice. That is our message.
Penny Red noticed one NBC report, in which a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:
"Yes…You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night, a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Revolution! Where next?
- How long has the leader been in power?
- What proportion of the population is under 25 and how many people does that make?
- What is the country’s gross domestic product?
- How pervasive is corruption?
- How much press freedom is there?
- How much democracy is there?
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Meat, murder and all that
Daisy, who is young and idealistic, sent me this link to meat.org. It takes you to a video of Sir Paul McCartney explaining that commercial farming practices and the mass killing of farm animals can be very cruel. On that point he is perfectly correct. Monday, December 27, 2010
Don't ask, don't tell, don't be gay: Roger Garford & Jean MacDonald
Jean MacDonald and Roger Garford have finally got some media coverage (thanks to Kris Jepson at Channel 4 News) for the injustice they suffered from the UK Ministry of Defence.Two years ago, in March 2008, they also got a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights saying the MoD was wrong to expel them both for being gay.
Their story has come out as the U.S. votes to repeal it’s so-called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ laws which allowed gay soldiers to serve in its military on the basis they kept their sexuality quiet.
But just ten years ago in Britain, the law was far more repressive. There was nothing about asking or telling, just a clear stipulation that to be a soldier you had to be straight. If you weren’t, you were liable to get the treatment Roger and Jean received.
Bear in mind, the government has still not apologised to either of them.
A stolen retirement
Just before he was due to retire, the Royal Air Force (RAF) began a witch hunt against Roger, to find out if he was gay.
They hauled in the Chief Technician for four long rounds of interrogation. They made him name and shame his partners. They humiliated him with graphic questions about his sexual encounters. He broke down and confessed all.
He told Kris Jepson at Channel 4 News: "Their investigation went into very personal details. They asked me was I still having sex with my wife, what sort of sex? They got me down on my knees – I was in a desperate state and I was forced to give names of men I had been with, which I regret to this day.”
They discharged him just over 100 days before he was due to stop work with a full army pension. A career that had begun in 1960 with high hopes ended in shame two days before Christmas in 1983.
"I was a real mess, psychologically, mentally and I suppose physically. The first few months after I'd lost my job, I lost my wife, my home. Those first few months of drinking I was in a real mess…I lost everything that was important to me, even recalling it now upsets me."
A career cut short
Jean was 20 when she joined the Royal Women’s Army Corps, which she hoped would be the beginning of a lifelong career. Four years later she had been dishonourably discharged for being gay.
In April 1981 an investigation began into Jean’s sexual orientation. She says she was interrogated by military police for 6 hours and not allowed toilet breaks or refreshments. Once again, the questioning was graphic and humiliating.
She tells her story to Channel 4 News: "They threatened me by saying they knew my twin sister was gay and said if I didn’t sign the discharge papers they would get her. They threatened to tell my mother. They said if I agreed to certain things that I would be safe. They said things like 'if I was in the same situation I would have experimented...' They basically convinced me I would be OK.
"They threatened to take me to the medical block because they claimed I had love bites down my back. They asked a lot of very sexual and intimate questions, including about sex toys and stimulations. It was just very crude and disgusting really.
"I got to the point where I would have done or said anything to get out of the room. I was very young and I just felt I had no other option but to sign the bit of paper. All I admitted was having a drunken fling with someone – I'd ended up in bed with another woman and we both had our underwear on and that's why they discharged me. I never admitted to being a lesbian because then I simply didn’t know."
In a desperate attempt to buy time to launch a legal challenge, Jean says she asked a friend to break her wrist so she would fail the army medical. After drinking heavily, they tried, but an Army X-ray showed it was not fractured.
She was discharged soon after. Later, her local hospital X-rayed the wrist again and said it was broken.
Discrimination in compensation
Both Jean and Roger had to rebuild their lives and start new careers. Jean still suffers from depression 29 years later. Roger is still working when he could have retired in the 1980s.
In March 2008, Roger, Jean and two other former members of the armed forces won their legal battle against the MoD at the European Court of Human Rights.
What it offered the soldiers is, lawyers say, only a fraction of what they would have received in a UK employment tribunal.
Roger was offered around £88,000, less than the value of his pension and lost income, not to mention the impact his dismissal had on his personal life. Jean was offered, £35,000.
Bear in mind that Kerry Fletcher, a lesbian soldier who successfully sued the MoD in the UK for unfair dismissal on the grounds of sex discrimination and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, won £187,000 in 2008, on the grounds she intended to continue in the army for another 12 years.
But for Jean, the MoD based their calculations on the assumption that a typical, heterosexual female soldier served for only 6 years.
That does not take into account the fact that lesbian women served for longer in the armed forces, or that at the time the MoD had a policy of dismissing any women who got pregnant, which was later ruled illegal.
Ironically, the MoD used a discriminatory method to calculate Jean’s compensation for being discriminated against.
There was no apology. There seems to be no further legal recourse.
Watch this 1997 film starring Helen Baxendale about a Military Police officer assigned to rooting out lesbian soldiers, only to find out that she too is gay.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Wikileaks: A geek gets the new Watergate
Is he a hero? Or is he a criminal? Is he a journalist? Or is he a geek and a freak? Should he be celebrated? Or should he be jailed?
This all conflates the two issues of whether the Wikileaks release was justified and whether he is a rapist. It does so on the assumption the charges are trumped up or were the result of a honey trap. Who knows.
But do many men who fail to use a condom end up on Interpol’s red list? More to Interpol’s shame, do many rapists? No. Western governments are pursuing him with remarkable zeal. And by doing so, they throw up all sorts of “delicious ironies”. Hillary Clinton’s statement on the issue reads, as John Naughton points out, like a “satirical masterpiece”.
Of course, the comedy has been helpfully highlighted by America’s rivals. Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted the hypocrisy of a nation which superficially champions freedom of speech but also pathologically pursues a man who has asserted the people’s freedom of information.
U.S. duality in its dealings with free speech are clear to see. And in the cables, a similar hypocrisy is unveiled. A nation notionally concerned with human rights asking the Ugandan army not to commit war crimes using its intelligence is a shocking example. The message: if you’re going to rape and pillage and worse, fine, but don’t implicate us, OK?
While it shocks, it might not surprise. The U.S. has sought to capitalise on that, insisting these leaks are ‘no big deal’. But that itself is inconsistent with the angry pursuit of Assange. And if it’s no big deal, why is the CIA is checking out the cables so much.
Aside from governments’ aggressive response, I have been surprised by how many journalists have turned on Assange. Some – like the Washington Times - have called for his assassination. Many say he has been reckless, churning out a tonne of data without interpreting it or redacting it. That it not true. He fed it through ‘professional’ journalists who have gone through the cables and crafted articles to accompany them. And he has removed many of the names.
But there is one uncomfortable fact that I am yet to see any journalist point out. As far as I can tell, this is the biggest exposé since Watergate.
Assange managed to cultivate a contact who gave him access and insight to the workings of the U.S. State Department. He used his knowledge of technology to expose it. He shone a floodlight into the dark corridors of power.
And journalists had barely managed to light a candle.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Venezuela's Lust Hotels
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Political plots threaten to bring down Maldives government
It looks unlikely there was any 1988-style attempted coup, complete with mercenary foreign forces poised to storm the capital Malé and seize the President's Palace. That was a disaster which led to deaths, failure, arrests and exile.
Instead, the allegations point to a plot to cripple the minority government of President Mohamed 'Anni' Nasheed by paying off Maldivian MPs to obstruct privatisation projects. 'The opposition MPs are operating a scorched earth policy, trying to stop the government from doing any work to help the people', says Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed.
Usual suspects
Police are still investigating while Abdulla Yameen and Gasim Ibrahim are held under house arrest. They are two of the Maldives most colourful characters. Their web of influence and wealth reaches far and wide. They have been on the scene for decades and are now both leaders of opposition parties, the People's Alliance and Jumhooree respectively.
Yameen is the half-brother of former President Gayoom. He held many portfolios during Gayoom's 30-year rule, including Home Minister. He was renowned for his hard-man image and his readiness to crush political opposition using the paramilitary 'Star Force'.
His aspirations to be the top man in the Maldives are also well-known, and during the period of transition from Gayoom's regime to the next, he was jostling for position and power.
Gasim's is a rags-to-riches tale. It begins with him working as a house boy for Gayoom's wife's family. From there, he is spotted by Gayoom and in time given the tools to make himself a rich man. He founded the Villa company, which provided gas, diesel and other imported products. He was also given resorts to run when the Maldives first tried out tourism in the 1970s and ‘80s. Both those businesses boomed.
He rose to become Finance Minister under Gayoom, a role that was created especially for him, despite a lack of qualifications. Today, Villa has a huge portfolio of companies, providing everything from resorts to schools.
It was, in fact, Gasim's money which helped form the opposition group now known as the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). When Gayoom found out the man whom he had made had betrayed him, he threw him in jail. An eyewitness who shared the cells with him tells me that for the week he was behind bars, Gasim was a wreck. Unable to cope with prison, he broke down and gave up his aspirations to rule. He was released and never again betrayed his boss.
Dilemmas
But if these two are both now found guilty, the question is: what will President Nasheed do with them? And what will he do about his lame-duck minority government?
'Anni' himself spent years in prison under Gayoom's rule, at least one of those in solitary confinement. He rose to power at the helm of an opposition movement which deplored the repression of Gayoom's government and the human rights abuses it committed. He assembled a party of former political prisoners and ran in the 2008 elections on a platform of democratisation.
If he now begins banging up his political opponents, his image as South Asia's democratic golden boy will be tarnished. But if they are proven to have carried out this plot, and he doesn't punish them, they may well bring down his government.
This is a dilemma Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is familiar with. Many times during his rule he faced a situation where close allies and rivals tried to rise up against him. He knew he had to slap them back down but not keep them down, especially in a small country like the Maldives. So he kept many of his rivals close.
For Anni, it's not quite that straightforward. Gayoom didn't have to worry about his image as a democrat, because he didn't have one. Anni does. And he also has to contend with the fact his government is without a cabinet and without a way of cooperating with parliament. What can he do?
Gayoom's former information minister, now an independent MP also called Mohamed Nasheed, has told Minivan News: “I have also heard from a highly reliable source that the president has been considering a cabinet reshuffle and will use this opportunity to appoint new ministers, and remove non-MDP cabinet ministers in the new arrangement. That, and threats and intimidation.”
But will it work? Or has Anni's power base been undermined too much already? He may simply have to resign and hand government to the DRP and PA alliance, declaring himself the victim of a plot he was powerless to stop, and one that was masterminded and carried out by MPs within the next government.
Or he may be able to trigger another round of elections, hoping he can secure a new mandate. That will be hard to do, though, with a majority ready to form a government. And even if he can call elections, he faces an electorate that never gave him a majority in the first place, even when the reformist mood was at its height.
Besides those two options, all he could do is make an audacious swoop for power by rushing these charges through court, finding Gasim and Yamin guilty, jailing them and weeding out all the complicit MPs. But that is the approach of his predecessor, not of an enlightened democrat.
Resign or repress. That is his choice.