Saeed: a real inherited burden for Maldivians

Lately, the local political soundscape and press cycles seem hopelessly stuck playing a single recurring saying on a continuous loop, centered around what politicians claim to have inherited.

In particular, any time Minister of Economic Development, Transport, and Trade Mohamed Saeed finds himself standing before a podium, speaking into a broadcast microphone, or confronting a reporter’s inquiry, he manages to steer his closing remarks right back to financial liabilities left behind by previous leaders, completely indifferent to whether the subject matter has anything to do with the issue being discussed.

Whether facing interrogation from media personnel or answering People’s Majlis representatives attempting to test his political wisdom, he consistently maneuvers his responses back to this pet talking point about past liabilities.

When a credentialed, schooled public figure such as Saeed behaves like he lacks a basic grasp of what national debt entails or how public fiscal mechanisms operate, it becomes a genuine reason for alarm.

Consequently, the local populace has begun asking a completely different question altogether. They want to know whether the real, unavoidable legacy passed down through the years is not the treasury’s shortfall, but Saeed himself, bouncing indefinitely between legislative seats and executive ministries.

The electorate is increasingly skeptical about why their own earnings must perpetually fund his generous public remuneration and pad his personal fortunes across successive ruling regimes.

A career built on institutional tenacity

Under the legal structures and constitutional governance that dictate Maldivian affairs, executive posts and legislative chairs are certainly not inherited feudal rights. Society recognizes well enough that when an official lingers across distinct terms of office or survives through contrasting governments, it is not by virtue of ancestral entitlement. However, this persistent recycling of a single political figure has crossed far beyond acceptable limits.

Mohamed Saeed originally stepped into high-profile governance during 2013, securing a seat inside President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom’s executive branch as the head of the economic development ministry. After that period concluded, he retained political relevance by representing the Maavah voting constituency during the 19th People's Majlis assembly on the ticket of the PPM and PNC coalition. Throughout that opposition interval, he simultaneously carried the post of PNC party vice president. Following the subsequent shift in national power on 17 November 2023, he managed to slide effortlessly into President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu’s cabinet, taking charge of the economic development and trade portfolio. Following a subsequent governmental reallocation of departments, his ministerial designation expanded further, covering economic development, transport, and trade.

Despite occupying prime cabinet authority across two fundamentally separate regimes, he has shown an utter lack of concrete deliveries over an extended timeline, all while tirelessly leaning on complaints regarding inherited balances to distract from that absence of progress.

Realities of state borrowing

The inescapable economic truth is that borrowing capital for major developmental initiatives, whether orchestrated by central authorities or channeled through significant public corporations, remains a conventional financial mechanism utilized by countries across the globe to achieve infrastructure improvements and spur broader financial development.

The foundational rationale behind this strategy is straightforward: governments secure the vast upfront cash reserves necessary for capital-heavy infrastructure immediately, and subsequently amortize those accrued balances through the future financial dividends and earnings those very physical assets generate.

The cumulative liabilities of the Maldivian sovereign structure represent legal commitments and financial borrowings sanctioned by previous administrations across multiple eras to sustain the yearly budgetary framework and construct foundational national projects.

This debt profile primarily separates into two components: obligations held internally, belonging to local banking entities and domestic money institutions, alongside external loans secured from foreign partner states and worldwide development banking bodies.

Whenever an electoral process concludes and control shifts to another group of leaders, servicing and repaying these state-sanctioned credit agreements continues as an uninterrupted statutory and monetary duty.

How sovereign obligations really work

Every single governing group that walks into office is legally mandated to shoulder every scrap of financial obligation entered into by earlier regimes. Governed by prevailing global standards and accepted monetary codes, financial facilities are never extended to an individual political president, nor are they restricted to a particular regime's calendar; they are legally bound to the Maldivian State entity itself.

For this exact reason, whenever a general election ushers in a completely new governing coalition, treaties and contractual instruments struck between the Maldivian sovereign entity, foreign countries, and international lending houses endure without interruption.

Within the yearly fiscal budget codified and ratified by the People's Majlis, paying down interest and handling debt service operates as an unavoidable, statutory priority. When the freshly installed regime crafts its operating figures, it is bound by law to earmark the requisite liquidity to cover both the core balance and accumulated interest fees maturing during that fiscal cycle.

Further, should a scenario arise where liquidating these historic loans proves demanding, initiating professional discussions with counterpart financiers to push back maturities, or restructuring the debt footprint via the placement of fresh bonds or replacement borrowings, represents an established convention across global finance.

As a result, regardless of changes in political fortune at the ballot box, the state treasury endures on an orderly, sustainable foundation of total financial accountability for previous engagements.

Passing the buck instead of delivering

Given that Saeed was thoroughly aware that earlier administrations engaged in massive borrowing, and that these balances constitute binding sovereign debts, and considering that his current administration came into authority claiming they had received an unreserved green signal to manage these liabilities because they possessed clear remedies, repeatedly hiding behind the excuse of past liabilities looks downright embarrassing.

The public observer feels profound dismay as this leadership continually fails to display meaningful commercial milestones while choosing instead to waste airtime with repetitive talking points.

The underlying reality of the situation is that citizens across the Maldives are not confused or troubled by the mechanics of the national ledger.

Instead, it is Saeed himself who has turned into an ongoing, unavoidable weight saddled onto ordinary taxpayers across every vital apparatus of authority and throughout every consecutive administration.

There is more than enough justification to conclude that the single genuine burden permanently passed down to the Maldivian citizenry is not the financial deficit on the state's balance sheet, but Mohamed Saeed himself.