How politics came full circle in the Maldives

By Daniel Bosley, former Editor at Minivan News, Maldives' stringer for Reuters and Anadolu Agency, freelance.

Stalled progress in the "Stealing Paradise" investigation is a continuous reminder that in small island societies, attempts to unravel such tangled webs are never simple.

Three years is a long time in politics anywhere, but in the Maldives, it’s enough for everything to come full circle, with time spare for another few spins around the island, making it hard to distinguish true progress from simply going round in circles. Within a year of taking office, President Solih’s government had used its Majlis supermajority to complete an unprecedented overhaul of the Supreme Court, which Judge Kriegler described, in a final withering assessment, as ‘a major threat to democratic rule’. The JSC documented 17 instances in which the court had violated the Constitution since 2008, resulting in 5 sitting members being replaced and 2 restored. The bench even broke new ground by including its first female judges.

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(NOTE: Excerpted by THE WIRED with permission from "Descent into Paradise: A Journalist’s Memoir of the Untold Maldives" by Daniel Bosley, published by Pan Macmillan.)