The Mohamed Muizzu administration has brought the Maldives’ era of independent media to an end, the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Chair, Fayyaz Ismail, said on Thursday.
While speaking at an MDP rally, Ismail said not even a handful of media outlets dared to speak out freely.
“The job of the media council president, who was supposed to oversee them, has been lost. Look at the shamelessness of them [the Mohamed Muizzu administration]; the media council president, even as he was talking about media freedom, lost his job. What level won’t they stoop to?” Ismail said.
MMC President and PSM News Operations Manager Ahmed Mustafa was sacked on Thursday after the TV station broadcast a portion of a documentary critical of the current administration, which won the investigative category award at the journalism awards.
Ismail said the people are being slowly robbed of the freedom and power they had gained in previous years. Every time the MDP’s opposition comes to power, it deceives the people and promotes lies, deception, and injustice in the name of democracy, he said.
Noting that Muizzu is acting completely contrary to his pledges, Ismail said he fully expected the President to spend the next five years blaming the previous MDP-led administration.
There were 1,000 political employees at the end of the MDP-led Ibrahim Mohamed Solih administration, but by the end of the first 11 months of the current administration, the number of political employees had doubled to 2,300, he said.
Fayyaz said the country is in danger of going back to the 19th century.
The people should raise their voices against the wrongs of the administration, and if they do not, freedom will be lost, he said.