FM Shahid heads to London for flag hoisting ceremony at the Commonwealth Secretariat

Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid has departed to the United Kingdom, where a flag hoisting ceremony is to be held to commemorate Maldives’ readmittance into the Commonwealth.

While the country left the Commonwealth in October 2016 during the previous administration, it officially re-joined the organization on February 1.

A Board of Governors meeting is scheduled for February 13, in London, and the flag hoisting ceremony to commemorate Maldives’ readmission as the 54th member state will be held on 6th February.

People’s Majlis’ majority leader, Central-Henveiru constituency MP Ali Azim is accompanying the foreign minister on the trip.

While Maldives’ readmittance into the Commonwealth was confirmed on Saturday, with Secretary General Patricia Scotland informing President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih via telephone, the parliament approved to join the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association on Tuesday.

Rejoining the Commonwealth is one of the key pledges of President Solih and the cabinet passed to rejoin the organization, shortly after assuming office in November 2018.

The president said that the Maldives rejoining the organization “is symbolic of this administration’s commitment to both engage with the international community and to deliver on our domestic pledges to citizens in good faith.”

Solih’s predecessor, jailed former President Abdulla Yameen, made the decision for Maldives to leave the Commonwealth in October 2016 amid mounting pressure from the group over corruption and deteriorating human rights.

The move came after a warning by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, to suspend the Maldives “if the political crisis triggered by the jailing of opposition leaders is not resolved.”

Yameen’s government had accused the Commonwealth of interfering in domestic affairs and “unfair and unjust” treatment.

Maldives first became a member of the Commonwealth on 9th July 1982.