Maldives govt will scuttle illegal efforts to impeach Mohamed Muizzu as presidency is not a game: Senior minister

Male: Accusing the Opposition of trying to illegally overthrow Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu's government in less than 100 days in power, a senior minister has said the administration would not allow them to do so unless they cut "every vein in our throats".

The comments by Minister of Islamic Affairs Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed came on Sunday as he was accompanying Muizzu on his first trip to Addu, the second-largest urban area in the Maldives in terms of population.

Pro-China Muizzu, 45, defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September last year.

Saeed alleged that the government is facing challenges from inside and out, and were being bombarded with the relentless spread of misinformation and baseless rumours, The Edition reported.

He said that it is the responsibility of the Opposition to hold the government accountable.

However, he said, it is not part of holding a government accountable to attempt to create obstacles for and overthrow a government elected by the people just as it has begun, in a manner that will ultimately cause the most harm to the people themselves.

"They have turned this into a game, it is of great concern that they have gone to the point where they are discussing impeaching a President elected by the people of this country," he said.

"They cannot illegally overthrow this government, God willing. They cannot turn this into a sort of twisted game and impeach the President, God willing. They can only do so by first cutting every nerve in our throats, God willing. There is no other way of achieving that," Shaheem asserted.

The country's main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which holds a majority in Parliament, last month wanted to submit a motion to impeach President Muizzu.

However, Muizzu got a respite after the Supreme Court earlier this month ordered the suspension of a recent amendment to Parliament’s standing orders that had made it easier for the opposition lawmakers to impeach the president and the vice president, On January 24, calling India the “most long-standing ally,” the MDP and the Democrats expressed concern about the Muizzu government’s “anti-India stance.”

Meanwhile, the MDP seemed unimpressed with Muizzu's Presidential Address and claimed that most of the points made in President Muizzu's speech were things that had already been initiated by the previous government led by the party.

On the President's estimation that 2 billion tourists will be welcomed to the country this year, MDP's Parliamentary Group (PG) Leader Mohamed Rasheed Hussain dismissed this administration's role in the achievement.

He claimed that this increase in tourist arrivals is not the result of the three months the Muizzu administration has been in power, but rather the cumulative work of the previous government throughout and since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"It was the MDP government that signed agreements to establish the National Health Laboratory and provide resources to ascertain the quality of medication. Drone delivery of medication was also introduced by the MDP government," he said.

Hussain alleged that although the Constitution stipulates that the status of the country must be clearly and truthfully shared in the Presidential Address, President Muizzu had not done so.

He alleged that the President had given false information and confusing rhetoric regarding events of the recent past and the economic status.

He said that despite the previous government having compiled and published a debt repayment plan for 2025-2026, President Muizzu failed to even mention in his Presidential Address if this government had a serious plan regarding debt repayment.

He accused the President of deceiving the public by having earlier claimed that he would run a transparent administration and said that even the Finance Ministry's website has stopped publishing details that it previously used to update regularly.

He went on to say that although Muizzu won the presidency by pledging to remove the Indian military personnel from the country, no mention of it had been made in the Presidential Address. He claimed that this is proof that there are, in fact, no armed foreign military personnel in the Maldives as they previously claimed.