I’m writ­ing this else­where, but let me put it sim­ply here.

MDP is like­ly going to win the 2028 elec­tion. Peo­ple will want to vote against Muiz­zu, they will vote for the most like­ly par­ty to win in the two-par­ty sys­tem, Yameen is a spoil­er can­di­date for Muiz­zu the same way the Democ­rats were a spoil­er can­di­date for MDP in 2023. They won’t secure enough votes to win in the first round, and will have to form a coali­tion with the Yameen fac­tion. Those of you who know me will also remem­ber that I said the same thing about PNC win­ning in 2023 – and, iron­i­cal­ly, that the Democ­rats will rejoin MDP. See how that turned out?

Any­way, I have stopped car­ing about elec­toral pol­i­tics for a good 8 years now. If they nom­i­nate Fayyaz for pres­i­den­cy, he will win. If they nom­i­nate any­one else for pres­i­den­cy in MDP, they will win too. It does­n’t mat­ter who it is, that out­come is set in stone. I’ll go more into detail about that in a pub­lic-fac­ing arti­cle.

Got that? Good.

Now, there’s one inter­ac­tion I caught wind of while lurk­ing on twit­ter dot com that I found absolute­ly insuf­fer­able and had to address:

How many god damn arti­cles do I need to churn out for Mal­dives Inde­pen­dent (yes, this account is pseu­do­ny­mous, not anony­mous) before it clocks to you peo­ple that MDP was flawed from the start and is, in my view, one of the worst things to hap­pen to this coun­try? What do you think I spent a whole ass month hyper-fix­at­ing on nation­al eco­nom­ic data for my data piece?

Before I get start­ed on my crash-out, here’s anoth­er primer.

Lis­ten, dude, I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather keep my unre­solved parental issues con­fined to the ther­a­py room rather than pro­ject­ing it paraso­cial­ly onto lit­er­al self-pro­claimed Reagan­omist politi­cians. And lis­ten, I’m sure this kid is prob­a­bly com­ing from a place of good inten­tions — and I don’t mean to slight them, I liked their work on com­pil­ing resort own­er­ship struc­tures — but, remind me, what does that max­im say that the road to hell is paved with?

I’ve gone into why I attack the MDP so much in so many arti­cles to the point I’m not going to elab­o­rate any fur­ther. I feel like I’m talk­ing to the fuck­ing wall. I don’t believe in play­ing polite­ness-pol­i­tics; a com­mit­ment to the truth requires blunt­ness.

Is Fayyaz… a social­ist?

To call some­one a social­ist first, you have to actu­al­ly define what the word means.

When I use the word “social­ism”, I mean sci­en­tif­ic social­ism: the inter­me­di­ary and tran­si­tion­al stage between our cur­rent polit­i­cal order of cap­i­tal­ist lib­er­al democ­ra­cy to a soci­ety where the eco­nom­ic objec­tives of class strug­gle is achieved in full. It is not an ide­ol­o­gy to adapt. It is not a syn­onym for “lib­er­al pol­i­tics”.

As Engels describes in Anti-Duhring:

” _{^{To accom­plish this act of uni­ver­sal eman­ci­pa­tion is the his­tor­i­cal mis­sion of the mod­ern pro­le­tari­at. To thor­ough­ly com­pre­hend the his­tor­i­cal con­di­tions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowl­edge of the con­di­tions and of the mean­ing of the momen­tous act it is called upon to accom­plish, this is the task of the the­o­ret­i­cal expres­sion of the pro­le­tar­i­an move­ment, sci­en­tif­ic social­ism}} ”

Get it? The idea is that you com­mit your­self to class strug­gle and an eco­nom­ic par­a­digm shift. Now, what does our res­i­dent “social­ist” think about that? Let’s see.

Right, maybe we’re not off to a good start, now, are we? But wait, here’s more.

Okay, maybe he was play­ing the long game? Maybe he’s like… try­ing to get all the cap­i­tal­ists on his side to win the war or some­thing, right? Maybe this is a gam­bit that my une­d­u­cat­ed and clear­ly lack­ing in exper­tise brain just can’t com­pre­hend. 5D chess and such.

Okay, but maybe look at the man’s poli­cies and track record first, right?

Sure. Here’s a time­line.

2018: Fayyaz expressed dis­con­tent over MIRA’s tax­a­tion on pri­vate enter­pris­es.

2019: Fayyaz insist­ed that the expan­sion of the pri­vate indus­try — already bloat­ed with inequal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion — is nec­es­sary for progress.

2020: Fayyaz’s “min­i­mum wage bill”, which was con­ve­nient­ly and gross­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to aver­age house­hold expen­di­ture and rent at the time, apart from being a mas­sive farce, com­plete­ly exclud­ed expa­tri­ate work­ers. Fur­ther­more, he expressed that rent con­trol is unnec­es­sary, sup­port­ing unre­strict­ed rent-set­ting in an already hor­ri­ble hous­ing mar­ket. MDP has also had its own beef with Fayyaz this year, with Nasheed once call­ing him to step down, remem­ber that?

2021: Nasheed — who’s cur­rent­ly back­ing Fayyaz for pres­i­den­cy — has alleged him of lit­er­al state-lev­el cor­rup­tion and involve­ment in organ­ised crime. Ene­mies to lovers much? Remem­ber when Fayyaz just hand­ed a whop­ping MVR 942 mil­lion to giant enter­pris­es for a bail-out? Or what about the time when he appoint­ed his own broth­er to a polit­i­cal posi­tion?

2022: Nasheed said work­ing against Fayyaz was a bad idea. I guess cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions are just water under the bridge, huh? By the way, Fayyaz said that the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem was unsuit­able for this coun­try. What’s up with the Bodu Bad­halu, then, huh?

2023: Remem­ber when Fayyaz said they’d win the 2023 elec­tion in round one, going as far as to say Ibu will secure about 56% of the votes? That aged like milk, huh?

And that’s about it for when Fayyaz was in pow­er, as a min­is­ter, in the exec­u­tive body of the gov­ern­ment.

Okay, fine. Maybe his gen­er­al thoughts on social­ism are weird and his track record in gov­ern­ment is rid­dled with cor­rup­tion, mis­man­age­ment, poor pre­dic­tions, and ren­tier-cap­i­tal­ist luna­cy. But since Ernesto Che Gue­bad­daa (I’m Addu too, don’t wor­ry) here insists that we let the past go and focus on the present and future, let’s do just that. I’m sure it’ll be very social­ist. Mind you, Nasheed called this Bodu Bad­halu stuff a “zero-paper” — they don’t even have a plan.

Anni’s British-con­ser­v­a­tive wet dream of baru­la­maa­nee niza­a­mu, a bare-min­i­mum sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers mech­a­nism, an anti-cor­rup­tion com­mis­sion clone but as an NGO, pre­tend­ing to get rid of polit­i­cal appointees while expand­ing con­stituen­cy sizes for more polit­i­cal appointees “nation­al mem­bers” (think of the women!), and anoth­er bare min­i­mum recall-vote mech­a­nism for when Anni inevitably turns on Fayyaz’s “social­ist” ass again and wants the gov­ern­ment dis­solved. Ok.

But what about the eco­nom­ics, right?

Pri­vatis­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment mea­sures, let the pri­vate sec­tor run loose with ram­pant cap­i­tal­ism, turn all SOEs into a lit­er­al pri­vate-capac­i­ty invest­ment insti­tu­tion, vague bull­shit about “reform” and “account­abil­i­ty”, and a lit­er­al nation­al bud­get to sup­port the rul­ing class cap­i­tal­ists.

Sounds very social­ist to me. I’m con­vinced!

But seri­ous­ly, what more did you peo­ple even expect? No social­ist or any stu­dent of class strug­gle would ever even both­er with bour­geois instru­ments of class rule and bour­geois democ­ra­cy. To those of you who are sick of these idiots and their soc-dem luna­cy, come join the rest of us with organ­is­ing efforts and prepa­ra­tion for the post-2028 land­scape and cri­sis.