News Desk
Senior figures in the ruling People’s National Congress responded sharply on Friday night to the joint statement signed by the three former presidents, with Parliament Speaker and PNC Chairman Abdul Raheem Abdullah, parliamentary majority leader Ibrahim Falaah and former Health and Foreign Minister Abdullah Khaleel all going on the offensive within hours of the agreement being announced.
Abdul Raheem posted on X that the three men who had signed a cooperation agreement had previously accused each other of corruption, imprisoned each other and presided over some of the most damaging episodes in the country’s recent history. He listed them without qualification.
The sale of shares in Dhiraagu and the water company. The lockdown of the Supreme Court. The arrest of Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed. The MMPRC corruption scandal. The arrest of political leaders. The theft of ventilators. The MDN report that ridiculed Islamic beliefs.
“Everything here is okay for these three presidents now,” Abdul Raheem wrote. “All the poems I used to read have become a farce. This is the extreme of selfishness.”
Falaah was more direct. He noted that the press conference the three presidents held to advocate for press freedom was itself a moment where journalists turned the tables on them. Questions about the murder of journalist Ahmed Rilwan during the Yameen years, the failure of the Solih government to bring those responsible to account, and the treatment of journalists under Nasheed went largely unanswered. Falaah said the three presidents had no standing to speak on the issue.
He went through each administration in turn.
On Nasheed: a judge kidnapped and imprisoned, courts locked down, state broadcaster MNBC misused, SAARC summit funds unaccounted for, islands distributed to allies.
On Yameen: judges threatened, funds taken from state coffers, 12 members removed from parliament and their seats occupied, journalists silenced, people including members of his own family unjustly imprisoned and tortured.
On Solih: the country placed in a debt trap of MVR 60 billion, ventilator funds stolen, journalists forced to reveal sources, the entire Supreme Court bench dismissed, High Court judges removed, a portion of the southern maritime boundary sold, and the release of Adeeb from prison days into the administration.
“This is a small part of what happened when each of them came to power,” Falaah wrote. “Then think about how much these people will wish the country and the people well. There is empty selfishness.”
Former Minister Khaleel framed the alliance in starker terms. He said the meeting depicted three people eager to seize power preparing for what he called a temporary marriage to overthrow the government. He said their past accusations against each other made the current partnership difficult to take seriously.
He reminded the public of the specifics. Nasheed, he said, had unfairly distributed islands among relatives, taken people to the streets and set fire to state property, causing MVR 280 million in damage. Yameen, he said, was the most corrupt figure in recent Maldivian history, who imprisoned people unjustly and locked down journalism. Solih, he said, had surrendered parts of the country’s maritime territory and forced journalists to reveal their sources, undermining the very press freedom the three now claim to defend.
“I wonder what these three have to say for the good of the country and the people,” Khaleel wrote. “The people will decide.”
The PNC response was coordinated and fast. The party is framing the alliance not as a democratic coalition but as three discredited figures pooling their remaining political capital out of self-interest. Whether that framing holds will depend partly on how much the public remembers of each administration, and partly on whether the three former presidents can demonstrate any coherent programme beyond their opening demand for the release of two jailed journalists.
Image: Social Media
