Ras Malé: a living testament to Muizzu’s deception

The path to power began in 2023 during the PNC’s nomination scramble, back when Dr. Mohamed Muizzu operated under the absolute conviction that former President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom would be barred from the presidential race despite clinching the official ticket.

Inside the City Council, he spent his tenure consolidating his personal influence, strategically handing out jobs to PPM loyalists. When his backroom plotting to grab the ticket spilled into the open, he was pushed onto Channel 13 to insist on camera that he would never betray Yameen for anyone else. However, at the absolute final hour, he sprang a calculated trap and walked away with the candidacy.

Once the ticket was his, the misleading narratives only expanded into his run for the presidency. At the core of his campaign was a solemn pledge of flawless transparency, swearing to the electorate that nothing would ever be hidden from sight and that he would never enter murky, questionable arrangements with foreign interests.

However, from the moment he entered office, the heavily hyped Ras Malé development morphed into the ultimate showcase of his trademark deception.

Punctual ceremonies, stalled realities

On 18 November 2023, while unveiling the Maafannu Clock Tower, President Muizzu informed the public that reclamation efforts at Fushidhiggaru Falhu would kick off within a month. Thirty days later, on 18 December 2023, he stood before the cameras to inaugurate the physical dredgers on schedule.

Tellingly, that single deadline remains the solitary vow regarding Ras Malé that he managed to fulfill as advertised. From that exact milestone onward, the entire venture drifted far away from his public rhetoric, prompting various political rivals to brand the whole operation a theatrical mirage.

For starters, the president had assured the public that the state treasury would not surrender a single coin for the reclamation works. In stark contrast to that boast, the operation saw the deployment of the largest dredger ever brought to the nation, with all reclamation bills footing straight out of public state reserves.

On top of that, he had vowed that 1,153 hectares would be fully reclaimed within eight months of breaking ground.

However, as his administration edges toward its third year, the acreage actually reclaimed remains an embarrassing fraction of that target, driving public accusations of outright bad faith.

Vanishing budgets and shattered housing dreams

When the reclamation first started churning, the government had to navigate a national budget passed by an MDP-controlled People’s Majlis. Taking advantage of the situation, administration insiders complained that this fiscal package was deliberately crafted to strangle Muizzu’s governing agenda until his coalition took legislative control.

The plain reality tells a very different story: even though the budget had been shaped with input from the incoming administration, a massive slice of those state funds was drained directly into Ras Malé.

Soon, accusations emerged that roughly MVR 400 million had been diverted to initiatives never even authorized in the approved spending bill, marking yet another milestone of deception.

Muizzu originally sold the mega-project as the definitive, ultimate fix for the suffocating housing nightmare in the Malé region. Instead of housing everyday citizens, the public watched half of the reclaimed island get offloaded to overseas interests.

Land brought up from the sea floor with public money, supposedly meant to shelter local families, was surrendered to foreign figures with zero connection to the country’s history, turning earlier rhetoric completely on its head.

Even during the formal 2024 Independence Day proceedings, the President took to the podium to vow that every single grain of sand dredged up belonged exclusively to the local population, swearing it would never be given away or leased out to external players for a solitary day. He maintained then that the dredging of 1,100 hectares was actively moving forward through a partnership between HDC and the Mid-Free Zone alongside contracted firms, claiming the whole expanse would be finished within eight months.

Secret deals in the desert

A mere 679 days after those patriotic assurances, an undisclosed meeting took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, shielded from domestic reporters and citizens alike. During this quiet gathering, Minister of Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development Dr. Abdulla Muththalib affixed his signature to a contract alongside Mohamed Alabbar, an Emirati magnate tied to Jewish investments, transferring half of Ras Malé into the hands of the firm Eagle Hills.

The administration kept both its intentions and the actual signing cloaked in complete darkness. The public only caught wind of the surrender when media outlets based in the UAE broke the story. These are the choices of a leader who previously stood before the national flag, waxing poetic about feeling the patriotic meaning behind its fluttering folds.

Once local journalists and political figures initiated inquiries into the murky corners of Ras Malé, administration ministers scrambled to offer competing, contradictory narratives across broadcast channels and social feeds to salvage the project's reputation.

Despite swearing that no sand would ever fall into foreign hands, fifty percent of Ras Malé was indeed handed to an external entity, and not merely for a brief transitional stint.

The signed arrangement amounts to a lifetime concession spanning ninety-nine years, virtually guaranteeing that not one person who signed the paperwork will be breathing when the term elapses. It leaves a glaring question unanswered: will the Maldivian people ever actually regain this land?

While state officials insist the terrain was legitimately leased out to Eagle Hills, they have failed to present any tangible evidence to verify their narrative. The public has been left completely in the dark regarding the financial sum, the official property valuation, how payments flow into state coffers, or what safety nets exist should the development fall flat. This shroud of secrecy supplies endless fuel to allegations of a gargantuan swindle.

Submerged fantasies and unlawful realities

Transportation to this new island has inspired equally wild rhetoric. While President Muizzu initially spoke of high-speed passenger ferries engineered to tackle tempestuous waters, he soon swapped that scheme for an even more fantastic spectacle.

On 22 January 2024, at the oath-taking event for Malé City Councilors, the President told attendees that the capital and Ras Malé would be tethered together by an undersea tunnel. He insisted that commuters riding on its submerged train would marvel at panoramic views of the ocean floor, adding that talks were actively progressing with qualified partners and that formal technical studies were underway.

The glaring snag is that this variety of subsea visual train tech is nonexistent across the globe. Naturally, onlookers wrote it off as another wild fabrication, with some reports noting that these alleged tunnel talks had never even occurred among senior government leadership.

Up to this very hour, transparent and trustworthy facts remain missing concerning Ras Malé, an initiative ostensibly reclaimed to house the Maldivian citizenry. Every layer pulled back only reveals deeper layers of manipulation. While billions of Rufiyaa in national wealth are burned to dredge up an island destined for a century-long lease, the Attorney General has openly conceded that the country lacks the legal framework required for such a transaction. The entire endeavor stands as an uninterrupted parade of broken promises, leaving Ras Malé as an enduring monument to deceit.