shahuru.com

It wasn’t a problem to screw three holes on a taro leaf in one go of peeing when we were teenagers. Back then the pressure and speed was enormous. It looks though with adulthood and maturity the power of peeing is not to be sought in the pressure you can exert but in the tactical timing of peeing.

There is substantial learning enough to trigger worrisome imaginations from the saga of People’s Majlis member Haleem leaving the house for toilet making the way for President of the Majlis, Mr Gasim Ibrahim, to remove the bill from agenda, regarding the status of non-elected members in the People’s Majlis. I hear they say that there is no People’s Special Majlis procedure, either, for a bill to qualify for automatic removal due to the absence of a member who submits a bill.

How does this paint in our mind the conceivable future of our nation with a ‘parliamentary system’? Where extra power and paws given to People Majlis; doses of money inserted into back pockets of Majlis members by the elites and foreigner, how shall the citizen of my nation influence their national policies? Can we trust the Majlis, that we see now, to pass most favorable laws and to elect the most capable and reliable Prime Ministers to lead the nation? In such a liquid system as the ‘parliamentary’, how will the dispersed, physically divided and small population coordinate for, override and bring changes as it pleases most appropriate to their collective conscience?

Sitting on the general consensus that it is time for Gayyoom to leave the seat for the rest of us, opposition is campaigning like anything for the parliamentary system which they say is the guaranteed card to relieve Gayyoom off the power systematically. Questions about Gayoom to be replaced by what type of a leader to serve for the interests of whom appear to be negligible within an awe of a pleasant mirage; similar to which some Iragi’s held just before the removal of Saddam. The now infamous half-of presidential-system is blamed and shamed for many of our failures both as a people and a nation. To people who can’t just believe the idea, it gets told that the system can be changed back to ‘presidential’, once the President’s Office gets relieved of Gayyoom.

“…Oh, Do you mean the rich who do not think common Maldivians deserve simple senior posts at their resorts, will just handover such a strategically advantageous factor like the system of governance into your hands? …”, to change to what serves best to you, not to them! I pray you be right but I beg to differ.

Within a parliamentary system, there are significant advantages for the elites who in the first place initiated the reform process, upset with size of piece each of them were getting out of the Maldivian small economic cake. If it is to get into President’s Office and Peoples Majlis through a presidential system the elite will have to treat their employees a bit respectfully, take some social responsibility and spend for general public. Hurray, within the parliamentary system, all that the rich will have to do is, wait until the public elects Majlis members and then fill in their pockets. People will have no influence on who comes to the leadership of the country or what laws gets passed. The balancing factor which is at the disposal of public to be able to elect legislature and executive from different political parties shall be eliminated; money is might; when Gasim puts half a million in the pockets of each member, there you are: a bill passed! Every resort island leased for 200 years. No presidential authority even to blame for not vetoing!

When our elected members waste public time, at the next People’s Majlis gathering, discussing whether to provide themselves with adult nappies to avoid having to go out of seat at critical times; it must disturb our conscience of how to survive our nation beyond the matter of anyone anymore hanging on power for too long.

We the common public may still be left with the problems we started with; bigger barriers on our way erected by elite wealth and foreign influence. The question of whether the system should be ‘presidential’ or ‘parliamentary’ which the people have got the opportunity to decide at the ballot boxes may not be synonymous to whether ‘Gayyoom’ or ‘Not Gayoom’. The former has heavier and long lasting implications.