An open letter to Pres. Muizzu on World Press Freedom Day

Dear Mr. President,

This communication is not intended to shower you with accolades or formal commendations on this World Press Freedom Day. To speak with complete honesty, I do not view you as a leader who possesses any legitimate goodwill toward the members of the press and therefore, no such honors are earned. However, my internal sense of duty forces me to produce this letter today, not out of an urge to hand you a bouquet of appreciation, but because I find it impossible to remain quiet about the current state of our nation.

I want to start by acknowledging the difficult position you are currently in. The weight of the various scandals currently circling your administration is profound. However, since even the First Lady has chosen to remain silent regarding these specific issues, I have no intention of lingering on them myself. The accusations being leveled by certain parties are of no personal consequence to me.

Regarding the specific brand of protection you promised to provide to reporters during your official remarks today, I would prefer to decline the offer entirely. My preference would be for you to simply return things to the way they were before. I strongly suggest that you follow through on the vows of total transparency that you broadcasted before you took power, rather than trying to sell us on these new and vague forms of state-offered security.

During the presidential race, your vocal dedication to openness created a sense of hope. You went out of your way to applaud and motivate the reporters who were working around the clock at that time to bring hidden facts to the public eye. You were the one who inspired them to track the movements of foreign soldiers, to record their presence on our soil and to highlight the ways the Maldivian military appeared to be subservient to outside interests. You swore to the public that nothing would be hidden from view and gave your word that every agreement signed by the previous government, deals you claimed damaged our national pride and independence would be fully exposed. Having access to that kind of information is the fundamental lifeblood of our work.

However, your conduct since moving into the President's Office has been the exact opposite of those campaign vows. As your administration nears the halfway point of its term, it has become clear that those high-minded commitments were nothing but empty words. What you once shouted as core principles have been downgraded to nothing more than forgotten lines in an old poem. In the current climate, secrecy is the standard. Almost nothing is being handled with transparency. Not only do the old agreements remain locked away from the public, but the brand-new contracts signed under your own leadership have also been wrapped in a shroud of total mystery.

Your preference for keeping the public in the dark is now a well-known fact. It does not matter how many times your various spokespeople or political allies stand up to swear that you are being transparent or pound their chests in a show of loyalty to the government. Every rational citizen in this country can see the blatant irony of those claims. One of the most obvious examples of this behavior is your flat refusal to reveal the actual quantity or the specific identities of the political appointees you have placed throughout the government.

For those of us in journalism, the most essential tool we have is the ability to access data. It is the only way that real reporting can thrive and the only way the citizens can stay accurately informed about how their government is operating. Holding a high volume of press conferences is a meaningless exercise if those events are used as nothing more than a stage for pre-planned talking points. Whenever a reporter dares to ask a question that actually matters, you frequently react with obvious irritation. Following those interactions, your administration’s attempts at clarification usually involve shifting the blame onto other people for the fact that the information provided was wrong in the first place.

To wrap this up, I want to say once more that you should not bother trying to provide us with your specific version of protection. There is an old saying about being bitten once and becoming twice as shy, and your definition of what it means to protect the press is genuinely frightening. It is important to remember that it was under your leadership that the police raided a news organization for the first time in the history of the Maldives and seized their property. It was your government that gave the order for a television station to halt its live broadcast of a protest simply because a sofa was being used as a prop in the street. You have gone as far as censoring creative content and music videos that you didn't like, and you have sent police officers into newsrooms equipped with forensic tools for criminal probes.

We have no interest in this. It is a form of intimidation. You should save your financial support and your patronage for the tiny online outlets and the underground websites that are run by political activists specifically to fix the government's public image and hide its many flaws. Even without your supposed protection, we are going to continue doing our jobs with the high level of responsibility and the ethical standards that this profession requires, whether you choose to recognize our work or not.

With all due respect.