News Desk
Former President Abdulla Yameen has defended his decision to work alongside his longtime nemesis, the Maldivian Democratic Party, saying the alliance is not about shared ideology but about opposing what he described as the current government’s violations of basic rights.
Speaking at a People’s National Front rally, Yameen said he had never claimed the MDP’s ideology or philosophy was sound. He was not walking back his long history of opposition to the party that campaigned hard to see him imprisoned. He was making a calculation about the current moment.
The MDP, he said, is doing real opposition work on the streets. The PNF is doing the same. No one else is. That, he said, is reason enough to work together.
Yameen, along with former presidents Mohamed Nasheed and Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, signed a joint agreement last week calling for the release of two jailed journalists and an end to what the three described as systematic press restrictions under President Dr Mohamed Muizzu’s government. The agreement was triggered by the jailing of two Adhadhu journalists for violating a Criminal Court gag order.
The decision drew immediate criticism from the ruling PNC and from some within Yameen’s own support base, who questioned how the man who built his political identity on opposing the MDP could now sit beside Nasheed and Solih. It is worth noting that press freedom was not a hallmark of Yameen’s own years in office, a period marked by the closure of television stations, the jailing of political opponents and the disappearance of journalist Ahmed Rilwan.
Yameen addressed the alliance directly. He said he was not doing this for personal gain. He said there is no justification for standing aside when the most fundamental rights of citizens are being violated. And he said the only two forces actually taking that fight to the streets are the PNF and the MDP.
