President Dr Mohamed Waheed has given an in-depth interview to 101 East, Al Jazeera's weekly Asian current affairs programme, where he spoke on the recent turn of events in the Maldives.
“It wasn’t a coup d’état. It has been portrayed in the western media as a coup d’état but the President resigned voluntarily. We have pictures of him having a cabinet meeting, following which he writes his own letter of resignation in front of the camera, with his cabinet standing behind him. And he could have indicated even indirectly, if he was under duress. He didn’t. And he took 24 hours before he changed his mind”, said President Waheed.
He further explained:
“The opposition’s call for the resignation of the President had been going on for a very long time, for almost 3 weeks. We had serial demonstrations every night in Male’ calling for President’s resignation for various reasons. And then when this thing happened, nobody expected this to happen. My understanding of it is that the President was issuing unlawful orders to the security forces, and at some point they decide that enough was enough. And they weren’t going to listen to him. And that’s when he decided to go and submit his resignation. But he changed his mind afterwards.”
When asked on the allegations that his presidency was illegitimate, President Waheed said:
“Of course these are unfair accusations we were totally unprepared. It took us by surprise and therefore we couldn’t get our message across to the rest of the world, to tell what our understanding of what happened. He [President Nasheed] had the machinery already in place because all the top positions and everything was appointed by him from his party only. And therefore they all shifted to his house and began the media campaign to show the rest of the world that it was a coup d’état. It wasn’t a coup d’état. Do you think if it was a coup d’état he would be out here and then talking to you and everybody else, and you know he has no restrictions on his freedom and moving around? We have a democracy here. We are respecting it. We welcome an independent investigation and to find out exactly what happened. We will not be in the way of finding out the truth”.
When asked what he would have done if President Nasheed had told President Waheed before hand, that he was being forced to resign, President Waheed said:
“I would not have taken the oath of office if he had said that. He should have called me. He didn’t.”
Speaking of his efforts in forming a National Unity Government, President Waheed further condemned some of former President Nasheed’s actions while he was in office:
“President Nasheed came to power through his coalition. He was unable to win by himself. So he brought in other parties to win the election. But soon after the election he decided to go back on his word and get everybody out of the government … And what we saw progressively after that was a gradual reversal of democracy in the sense that the Head of State began to do things that were unconstitutional, like locking up the Supreme Court, arbitrarily arresting political leaders and detaining them without charge, and finally we had a situation, very bizarre situation where the President orders the military to arrest a serving judge.”
When asked about the judiciary in the Maldives:
“I trust the judiciary yeah, but it has problems. There are problems in the sense that it has to be strengthened. They have to have better training in use of modern evidence. I would like to see that the judiciary become more independent, that they have more resources.”
Further, President Waheed spoke on the challenges faced in embracing modern democracy:
“We are increasingly moving towards a society where first of all we uphold our constitution. We respect the rule of law, and we don’t have people who can practice dictatorial method. But this is a struggle. This struggle didn’t start in 2008, it started a long ago. We all have suffered in the process. Therefore we have a stake in succeeding in democracy and democracy will continue. There is no doubt about it.”