Mohamed Nasheed

Mohamed Nasheed (born May 17, 1967, Male, Maldives) is a journalist, activist, and politician who was elected president of the Maldives in 2008 but resigned from office in early 2012 in what he characterized as a coup d’état. After his exile in 2015, he returned to the Maldives in 2018 and later served as speaker of the People’s Majlis (2019–23).

Early life and political activism

Nasheed attended grammar school in Male before attending schools in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1981–82), and in West Lavington, Wiltshire, England (1982–84). He received a bachelor’s degree in maritime studies from Liverpool John Moores University in 1989.

Nasheed returned to the Maldives and in 1990 became assistant editor of the new magazine Sangu, which criticized the government of Pres. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Sangu was banned, and Nasheed was sentenced to house arrest. He was jailed later that year and was held in solitary confinement for 18 months. He was sentenced to three years in prison in 1992 but was released in 1993. Nasheed applied for government permission to form an independent political party in 1994, but his request was rejected. Beginning in April 1996, he served six months in prison for an article he had written in a Philippine magazine about the 1993 and 1994 elections in the Maldives.

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In 1999 Nasheed was elected to the Maldivian parliament, the People’s Majlis. He was arrested again in October 2001, and in the following month he was sentenced to two and a half years’ exile to a remote island. In March 2002, while in exile, he was expelled from the Majlis because he had not attended the parliament for six months; he was released in August. After riots in the capital, Male, in September 2003, Nasheed left the Maldives for Sri Lanka, and while in exile there he helped found the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in November 2004.

Presidency

Nasheed returned to the Maldives in April 2005. That June the Maldivian government passed legislation allowing political parties to participate in elections, and Nasheed, as head of the MDP, began a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience designed to bring greater democracy to the Maldives. Detained again, he spent more than a year under house arrest (2005–06). He campaigned for a parliamentary democracy in 2007 when a constitutional referendum was held, although voters ultimately chose the presidential system that Gayoom had favoured. Nevertheless, he ran for president the following year in the Maldives’ first free presidential election and defeated Gayoom with 54 percent of the vote.

As president, Nasheed became known internationally for his outspoken efforts toward halting climate change. All the Maldive Islands are low-lying, none rising to more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) above sea level. In 2009 Nasheed wrote, “Sea level rise of even half a metre would make much of [the Maldives] uninhabitable.…But the Maldives is no special case; simply the canary in the world’s coal mine.” The Maldives announced plans that year to become the world’s first carbon-neutral nation by 2020 (an ambitious target that was later delayed to 2030). Nasheed even held a cabinet meeting underwater in October to draw attention to the danger the Maldives would face from rising sea levels. In June 2010 relations between Nasheed and the People’s Majlis reached a new low when Nasheed’s entire cabinet resigned to protest the parliament’s blocking of the Nasheed government’s initiatives. Nasheed reappointed his cabinet. A 2011 documentary film, The Island President, covered Nasheed’s history of political activism and his environmental-protection efforts as president.

Nasheed’s administration continued to be hampered by loyalty to Gayoom within the judiciary and among members of the opposition Maldive People’s Party in the Majlis. In January 2012 Nasheed had a senior criminal court judge arrested for alleged bias in favour of the political opposition. After weeks of street protests by citizens opposed to the arrest, Nasheed resigned in early February and was replaced by his vice president, Mohamed Waheed Hassan. Shortly thereafter Nasheed claimed his resignation had been forced by the police and military, and his supporters staged protests and called for early elections. In August an official commission of inquiry backed by the Commonwealth announced its finding that Nasheed’s resignation had been voluntary and that there had been no coup. Meanwhile, in July charges were filed against him for what was deemed to have been his illegal arrest of the criminal court judge in January. Nasheed’s trial was delayed repeatedly over the following months through various appeals and hearings. He charged that the proceedings were meant to result in his disqualification from contesting the scheduled September 2013 presidential election. In March 2013 it was announced that the trial would be delayed until after the election, in which Nasheed was running as the MDP candidate.

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In the September 7 election Nasheed won a large plurality of votes (45 percent) but not enough to avoid a runoff election against the second-place candidate. That election was scheduled for September 28, but legal challenges to the first election’s validity delayed the second vote and eventually resulted in the annulment of the results. A new election was held November 16. Nasheed, the front-runner, was defeated narrowly by Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, the half-brother of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Exile and return

In February 2015 the charges against Nasheed were dropped. However, shortly thereafter he was re-charged, and in March he was found guilty of having illegally arrested the criminal court judge. Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In December he was granted leave to travel to Great Britain for medical treatment. While there he gathered support for his case and warned of growing authoritarianism in his country. The British government granted him asylum as a political refugee in May 2016. Nasheed left for Sri Lanka later that year, where he remained until late 2018. The Supreme Court of the Maldives stayed the charges against him on October 30, 2018, more than a month after a presidential election had been won by a senior leader of the MDP (Ibrahim Mohamed Solih), and he returned to the Maldives two days later. The following year he was elected to the People’s Majlis and became parliament speaker.

As parliament speaker, Nasheed was publicly critical of Solih and exposed rifts within the party. Although Solih launched an anti-corruption campaign that targeted several high-profile figures, Nasheed accused the government of doing too little to address extremism and corruption on a broader scale. He also challenged a key member of Solih’s cabinet, going so far as to attempt a no-confidence vote against him in August 2020. Meanwhile, Nasheed and other members of his party pushed for measures that would replace the presidential system with a parliamentary democracy, although Solih asserted that such a decision would need to be made through a referendum.

In May 2021 Nasheed was critically injured after an improvised explosive device detonated outside his home. He sought treatment abroad, where he remained until October. In 2023 he stepped down as speaker of the People’s Majlis.