FEBRUARY began with Abdulla Yameen in complete charge of Maldivian politics. One by one, he had seen off his political opponents. The courts had meekly convicted his predecessor-but-one as president, his vice president, his defence minister and the heads of two opposition parties. They had also awarded him control of the ruling party, which was being contested by his half-brother, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Mr Yameen’s predecessor-but-two, who had ruled as a dictator for 30 years. The Election Commission stripped 12 opposition MPs of their seats, and the Supreme Court made it impossible for pro-government MPs to defect to the opposition and keep their parliamentary jobs. That protected Mr Yameen from impeachment, among other inconveniences.
So it came as quite a surprise when the same Supreme Court overturned all these decisions out of the blue late on February 1st. The trials of all the opposition figures, it declared, had been politically motivated. They should be retried, it said, and released in the meantime. As for the deposed opposition MPs,...Continue reading
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