The Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP), led by former Attorney General Dr Hassan Saeed, has released a statement saying that the party fully supports Addu becoming a city, but only if it was accomplished through lawful procedure. Following the President’s first declaration that Addu would become a city prior to the local council elections, DQP Deputy leader Imad Solih filed the issue in the Civil Court stating that the President had not followed correct procedures and that therefore his declaration was invalid. On Sunday, the Civil Court ruled in DQP’s favour and overturned the President’s decision to make Addu a city. Adduans and ruling-party activists gathered near Dr Hassan Saeed’s house after the court ruling, and called for DQP to be abolished. Saeed is himself a prominent Adduan. ”The Decentralisation Act was drafted by the government and was ratified by the president,” observed DQP in a statement today. ”The Act very clearly states how cities should be determined in different parts of ...
By Yameen Rasheed | January 30th, 2011 | Category: Society | No Comments Just two weeks ago, the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak seemed as firm and immovable as the great timeless pyramids that symbolise his country of Egypt.Today, the whole world is watching in suspended disbelief as tens of thousands of Egyptians openly defy Mubaraks security forces ignoring curfews, braving tear gas shells and water cannons, and tearing down giant posters of the powerful dictator that ruled over them for 30 years.In parts of Cairo, law enforcement has melted away before the protestors, and the army has been called in to wrest back government control as Mubarak faces the largest public uprising since the Egyptian monarchy was overthrown in 1952.Meanwhile, a sudden clamour for freedom is also posing serious challenges to despotic regimes elsewhere in the Arab world.This unlikely revolution began with a humble Tunisian fruit-seller, Muhammad Al Bouazizi who,...
By Yameen Rasheed | January 22nd, 2011 | Category: Politics, Society | 15 comments It is a little known fact that many of the brightest, well-known stars in the sky have Arabic names. The luminous Aldebaran of Taurus, the majestic Rigel of the Orion constellation the night sky is studded with shining reminders of an age where the early Muslim astronomers mapped the heavens and the Earth, and committed the knowledge to thousands of paper manuscripts and stored them in the worlds first public lending libraries.In the early centuries following the Prophets death, Muslims made tremendous intellectual and scientific breakthroughs in areas as varied as astronomy, arts, science, math, philosophy and literature: a period accurately portrayed as the Golden Age of Islam.Referring to what he called civilizations debt to Islam, US President Barack Obama said in his famous speech at Cairo University in June 2009, It was Islam that carried the light of learning t...
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