Former loyalists suddenly remember every sordid detail once the throne has slipped away

Political loyalties are notorious for mutating overnight, but watching yesterday’s fawning sycophants turn into today’s righteous whistleblowers demands genuine skepticism.

The public is treated to the bizarre spectacle of former devotees rushing to unpack the hidden misdeeds of Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom’s presidency, leaving ordinary citizens stunned not just by the claims themselves, but by the glaring silence that preceded them. If all these disturbing events actually occurred, one must wonder why these insider accounts were buried so deep for so long.

Red roosters and midnight rituals

Take the sensational disclosures made by Ibrahim Falah, who once occupied the upper echelons of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and now sits as the main ruling People’s National Congress’ (PNC) Majority Leader. Falah now paints the former president as a man obsessed with dark magic and occult rituals, going so far as to caution anyone looking toward Yameen’s home to arm themselves with protective holy verses beforehand.

According to Falah’s retrospective account, following the 2018 defeat at the polls, Yameen remained completely unbothered, adamantly insisting that Ibrahim Mohamed Solih would be supernaturally prevented from being sworn into office.

Falah further recounted absurd operations involving a practitioner of the dark arts striping down to enter the sea at Raalhugandu each night at midnight, paired with state-wide sweeps to hoard every available red rooster across the island chains.

The narrative gets even more scandalous: when a national Friday sermon condemned sorcery, causing the frightened practitioner to panic, Yameen reportedly shrugged off the moral hazard by stating that divine accountability was a concern for the distant hereafter, while the battle for the present world had to be won now.

Unappreciated loyalty and ransacked party coffers

While Falah offered supernatural drama, senior PNC figure Ibrahim Shujau took a more personal approach, publicly lamenting whether Yameen could ever genuinely appreciate human loyalty. Shujau pointed to figures like Abdul Raheem Abdulla, who supposedly stood by Yameen with absolute dedication to the bitter end. He recalled an era when the former First Lady, Fathimath Ibrahim, would not even sit down for a meal unless Falah was at the table, a stark contrast to how Falah is branded an enemy today. Shujau expressed bitter frustration over how someone like Abdul Raheem, who surrendered his entire existence to the party’s cause, is now tossed aside and treated like nothing.

Meanwhile, the financial dirty laundry was hung out to dry by Vilimalé lawmaker Mohamed Ismail. He stepped forward to reveal his personal knowledge of how state election disbursements awarded to the PPM were actually spent.

Rather than serving official party functions, Ismail claims the public cash was wordlessly repurposed to foot private electricity bills, clear steep legal retainers, and pay off personal tuition costs.

A litany of sins from former apologists

Not to be left out of the pile-on, Abdul Raheem Abdulla himself issued an exhaustive catalog of what truly destroyed the Yameen administration. He attributed the regime’s collapse to runaway pride, spite, brazen arrogance, a complete failure of the justice system, naked authoritarianism, wholesale corruption, and the systematic looting of the public purse, compounded by excessive meddling from Yameen’s wife.

He painted a picture of a leader suffocated by an ego so monstrous that every other human being was treated as an uneducated simpleton, a crook, or an enemy of the cause.

Even President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu contributed to the somber walk down memory lane, calling up the regime's ugliest hours. He revisited the surreal scene of security forces tearing into the roof of the Supreme Court to drag out and detain sitting judges.

Muizzu emphasized how painful it was to witness the nation’s top judicial figures, alongside former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a statesman who governed for three decades and held the line during the violent assault of November 3, dumped into squalid, claustrophobic prison cells.

Hypocrisy of convenient revelation

Listening to this coordinated chorus of outrage, one cannot escape the rotting elephant in the room: why was every single one of these men mute while it was happening?

When opposition politicians sounded the exact same alarms years ago, these current moral crusaders vigorously ridiculed the charges, brushing them off as empty, fleeting soap bubbles.

Back when journalists and media houses faced bankrupting fines, targeted gag orders, and state-sanctioned intimidation for reporting these very abuses, today’s whistleblowers willingly acted as Yameen’s political human shields.

Hearing them suddenly announce that the motherland matters far more than any single individual does not sound like patriotism; it sounds like brazen posturing.

There is an unavoidable, foul contradiction when individuals who steered the machinery of government, deceived the public, and enabled systemic state wrongdoing suddenly rebrand themselves as fearless truthtellers.

Sweeping abuses under the rug while enjoying state perks, only to weaponize the truth once a different administration opens the door, is the exact opposite of integrity.

An old proverb reminds us that the facts will always find their way to the light eventually.

However, as these politicians savage their former benefactor for personal advancement and parade past horrors as brand-new revelations, the public is left facing the most cynical spectacle politics can produce.