Maldives president appoints new governor in defiance of parliament

The president of the Maldives has announced he has appointed a new governor for the country’s central bank. According to the country’s constitution, the nominated governor will need formal approval from the country’s parliament. The parliament, however, is currently being prevented from meeting by the presence of armed soldiers loyal to the president.

President Abdulla Yameen “has appointed Mr Ahmed Naseer as the governor of the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA)”, according to a central bank press release dated August 24. The wording of the press release suggests that Yameen may be attempting to bypass parliament and appoint a new governor without the approval of lawmakers. 

A two-sentence press release on the president’s official webpage stated that Yameen had appointed Naseer, again without mentioning parliamentary approval.

Former governor Azeema Adam resigned on August 16. A press release from the MMA said she had left the post to join her husband, who had been appointed the Maldives’ diplomatic representative to the United Nations. President Yameen’s office said in a statement released on August 16 that he had nominated deputy governor Neeza Imad as Adam’s successor, subject to the approval of the Majlis, or parliament.

Yameen first sent troops to suspend the Maldives parliament on July 24, after opposition politicians agreed to vote on the removal of the parliamentary speaker, seen as a key ally of the president. Troops then forcibly prevented lawmakers from meeting again on August 22 in order to prevent a vote of no confidence in the president, locally-based correspondents reported.

The political scandal engulfing Yameen’s administration stems in part from accusations that he and members of his administration plotted to use the country’s central bank for money laundering. A series of detailed reports from the Qatar-based news organisation Al Jazeera accused Yameen of having planned to use central bank accounts to launder cash that would be flown to the Maldives.

Yameen, according to reports by locally-based journalists, has publicly denied he was personally involved in money laundering and blamed his imprisoned former deputy president, Ahmed Adeeb. The central bank strongly denied it was involved in money laundering in a statement released on September 8, 2016.

The former deputy president was convicted by a Maldives court in 2016 of terrorism and corruption charges, including a plot to kill Yameen by bombing his speedboat. Adeeb denies the charges. The Al Jazeera reports on alleged money laundering make it plain that sources close to Adeeb leaked much of the information about alleged corruption by the president’s office.

The new statement does not mention any need for the parliament to approve Naseer as governor. The statement does also not mention deputy governor Imad.

Ahmed Naseer, the president’s nominee to become governor, has served as both the chief executive and the chairman of the board at the Maldives’ capital market development authority, the MMA said in its statement.

Naseer has also worked at the central bank, and served as the “minister of state”, or deputy minister, at the country’s finance ministry. He holds a master’s degree in policy economics from Williams College, in Massachusetts, the US, the statement added. Naseer also has an undergraduate degree in economics and marketing from Curtin University of Technology, Australia.