Monday, June 25, 2007

A free-spirited movement sharing kindness



More on the free hugs campaign.

"Green Imperialism"- the blame game getting hotter

At the World Economic Forum on East Asia, a two-day conference in Singapore on Monday, Malaysia and Indonesia have hit out against the rich countries.

Malaysia and Indonesia, the world's leading producers of crude palm oil, are leading a campaign to fight environmentalist claims that their plantations destroy vast swathes of tropical forest, pushing endangered animals like the orangutan towards extinction.

Asian business and government leaders have also accused rich countries of hypocrisy, saying they run polluting industries with cheap labor in China and then blame the country for worsening global warming and climate change.

Nor Mohamed Yakcop, Malaysia's Second Finance Minister, has called to end the "hypocrisy" that blames China and other developing countries for environmental damage when sustainable development is the collective responsibility of nations.

Nor Mohamed has called it the 'green imperialism,' practised by rich nations.

China's economic boom has given rise to massive and harmful pollution nationwide, and a Dutch government research body said last week that China for the first time spewed out more carbon-dioxide emissions last year than the United States.

Nor Mohamed Yakcop told the forum that "the companies that are polluting in China are owned by Americans and Europeans and Japanese and others. They are benefiting from the cheap labour. They are benefiting from the resources...."

A Chinese aviation tycoon told the discussion that the West was the original polluter, while an American businessman noted that Asia's energy consumption is relatively disproportionate to its contribution to the world economy.

But all participants agreed that instead of fixing blame, the problem should be solved internationally and with private sector participation.

"Countries without trees keep telling the countries with trees to stop chopping them down and to slow down growth. We can't slow down growth because we have plenty of poverty left," Yakcop told the forum attended by about 300 business leaders and government officials

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Time is a premium

If some scientists are to be believed, the clock of demise for our beautiful coral islands barely 3 meters above sea level is ticking fast.

Should the alarmist theory cause gloom for us?

While many developing countries are coping with population growth and intense competition for living space, what can the low-lying coastal countries do to avoid their citizens becoming environmental refugees?

Friday, June 22, 2007

The worry over waves

The Maldives is a cluster of 1192 small coral islands, spread over a geographical area of 90,000sq kilometres (including sea) in the Indian Ocean.

The islands that make up the Republic are very small, barely 3meters above sea level- the total area being around 298 square kilometres and Male' the capital island being only 450.6 acres.

The rough weather and tidal surge Maldives is experiencing over the last few days has resulted in damage and destruction of property in several islands.

Strong winds, heavy rain and rough seas in the past years coincide with low pressure trough in the southwest Bay of Bengal.

In view of the global warming and climatic changes that are occurring, should Maldives worry about a sinking feeling? Or is still early to tell?

Well, not everyone believes that global temperature is rising or it is bad.

People have always "created" experts to justify their arguments. Tobacco companies have "scientists" to claim that nicotine is not addictive, asbestos companies have "doctors" to claim that asbestos does no lead to asbestosis of the lungs, and confectionery companies have "dentists" to claim that sugar does not lead to tooth decay.

No one argues that greenhouse gas concentrations are going up extremely rapidly. No one argues that changing this will change the way the atmosphere behaves. The debate is about whether those changes will cause global warming- and whether they are the cause of the global temperature increases.

While looking up to the international community to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, what can Maldives do to help its citizens avoid the wrath of the waves.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Unusual Contradictions

Seeking to draw in the tourist dollars which contributes 20 percent of the country's GDP, Maldives promotes tourism which is the country's biggest industry on a slogan "the sunny side of life."

The sunny side of Maldives is enjoyed mainly by the foreign customers who bring in the tourist dollars .

The sunny side of Maldives is an earthly paradise where every unfulfilled dream of the imagination can come true. This sunny side allows the sun-craving visitors to go about semi naked on these idyllic islands; the tourist resorts that are happy to serve their guests the liquor that is forbidden by Islam to the native inhabitants of this 100 percent Muslim nation who are devout Muslims.

Muslims are not allowed to drink liquor both according to our criminal law and Sharia.

The other side of the sunny side reveals some glorious contradictions. The elites of our society mainly resident in the capital Male' enjoy high living standards, while most of the ordinary citizens struggle to meet ends.

The contrast in fortunes of the wealthy against those who eke out a meager living or those who are trapped in grinding poverty is an issue even the stalwarts of the capitalistic system, the United States of America and the United Kingdom have started talking with some dismay.

Since Maldives is a 100 percent Muslim country and Islam is our way of life, it is an unacceptable contradiction to have such a wide income disparity, as the religion of Islam seeks to reduce the maldistribution of wealth wherever it exists.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Clan-based politics

In the name of democracy and pluralism, political clans are taking a step forward in the Maldives.

The separation of powers is an unknown concept in Maldives. Efforts are now being made to reform the current system and separate the powers of the state in order to create a fair system of governance and to hold public officials accountable for their responsibility. The absence of a political ideology and institutional traditions is making it much harder and time-consuming to achieve the transition.

Though Maldives has made record economic growth during the past 15 years, the nation still faces some key challenges.

Disparities in income and living standards vary significantly between the capital Male' and the outer lying islands. Employment opportunities are also very limited in the outer islands. As a result there is a huge influx of migration to Male', making it a social burden on Male'.

A centralised system of control has prevailed in the Maldives where the people from the outer islands have to come Male' which houses the government offices as well the commercial centre. Everything from education to employment is available from Male'. Even most of the uninhabited outer islands are leased by the rich and wealthy who reside in Male'.

Due to the lack of economic diversification, many people from the islands have traditionally come to depend on the benevolence of an elite class of people who own wealth, business and exert political influence in Male.

In the past the elites of society comprised of distinguished elders who served the community, knowledgeable persons, wealthy individuals and policy makers. The elders and scholars no longer have the same clout and social standing unless they are financially rich, since progress is currently measured only in financial wealth.

Thus a person's status in society is defined by the government job that he or she holds and the wealth of their material possessions.

The values of thrift and sharing have ceased to be strong community-binding forces for this 100 percent Muslim nation of 360,000 people.

Our society is caught up with western consumerism that believes that increasing the consumption of goods is good for the economy.

Maldives is a country where you are looked upon depending upon who you are in the government or the wealth of your material possessions. In these situations it is very tempting to form political clans and factions which are emerging as an abiding force in the current political reform process.

A historical example of a country that has suffered and continues to be mired in clan politics is Philippines.

The late 1960s and early 1970s Philippines saw economic development that was second in Asia, next to Japan.

Ferdinand Marcos was, then, the elected president. Barred from seeking a third term, Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972 and ruled the country by decree. Marcos extended both his power and tenure by force. His authoritarian rule became marred with unmitigated, pervasive corruption, cronyism and despotism.

The country's economic prosperity was thwarted and today Philippines is among the bottom of the list of the Asian economies.

Two decades after President Ferdinand Marcos was driven out from power in 1986 by people power, he still draws the faithful to his farming town where his lavishly waxed corpse lies in a family mausoleum.

Clans are very strong in Philippines. Today, Philippine democracy is little more than a ruthless contest among rival clans with such names as Aquino, Arroyo and Marcos. Political parties are largely irrelevant, and most Filipinos are relegated to the role of spectators.

To the average persons on the street, the oldest democracy in East Asia has failed to improve their lives.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

"Good people trapped in a bad system" - Al Gore


In “The Assault on Reason” Al Gore gives a no holds barred assessment of George W. Bush, asserting that the president is incompetent and “out of touch with reality.”

Here is what columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote:
For example, when Gore is asked if any of the Democrats running for president were changing the system he holds in such low esteem, he pulls no punches.

"They're good people trapped in a bad system," he says, "and I think it's the system that needs to be changed and I don't see them changing it."

The campaign dialogue so far, he says, has not been "very enriching or illuminating" in "either party." But, no, that doesn't mean he's going to run, though he never completely shuts the door. It's part of the fun he's having.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Controlling drugs in Maldives

While Maldives has made remarkable progress in the control of communicable diseases like malaria, and filaria , the menace of drug addiction is still rampant.

A report on Haveeru that came out following prison riots states that at the moment there are around 49 female prisoners in the jail which houses around 700 inmates. Most of the prisoners are serving sentences on drugs related charges.

These are appalling statistics. In the absence of intense rehabilitation to treat the affected individuals, Maldives will face a social nightmare.

Drug addiction is a complex disease that affects the brain.

It is characterized by compulsive drug craving, seeking, and use that persist even in the face of severe adverse consequences.

Controlling the the abuse of drugs is an important worldwide concern. The harms associated with drug abuse have galvanized concern around the world. The widespread frustration over the magnitude of drug consumption, the drug trade and associated crime is alarming.

One country that stands out in the fight against the illegal drug business is Singapore.

Drug related problems in Singapore have been largely contained by strict government measures.

The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) is the main drug enforcement agency, which closely co-operates with the Customs and Excise Department and the police force to eliminate drug supplies and to prevent and reduce drug abuse.

In Singapore, drug traffickers are prosecuted in courts of law under the Misuse of Drugs Act or detained under the Criminal Law Act.

Drug addicts are admitted to drug rehabilitation centres for compulsory treatment and rehabilitation.

The inmates take part in physical exercise which is a form of paramilitary training intended to restore their health and to inculcate self-discipline. They are also provided with counselling and ample opportunities to learn a trade, to improve their vocational skills or to better their academic qualifications.

The addicts who have undergone treatment are provided with gainful employment and after work they reside in half-way houses for a period of time.

The progress towards a drug-free life of addicts released from treatment is closely monitored through their employers and family members.

Maldives cannot afford to lose out on its younger generation facing this deadly disease. Both political will and compassion are required to tackle the drug menace head on. It can be done, we just need to tread the path that others have done in similar circumstance and achieved a successful outcome.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Vanishing Maldives?


This picture of the concrete wall around Male' is taken from Global Coral Reef Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to growing, protecting and managing the most threatened of all marine ecosystems—coral reefs.

GCRA is a coalition of volunteer scientists, divers, environmentalists and other individuals and organizations, committed to coral reef preservation.

The GCRA findings reveal a grim picture. They say, "All around the world the corals are dying. There are many causes, but the major one is global warming, caused by the fossil fuel addiction of people often on the other side of the world.

Global warming has an equally evil twin, global sea level rise, caused by the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and the volumetric expansion of warmer oceans. The result of this double onslaught is that almost all the white coral sand beaches of the world are vanishing with ever increasing speed before our eyes.

The most serious effects are in the world's lowest lying islands, where the winds may have piled beach sand no more than a few meters high. Whole nations, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tokelau, and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, along with thousands of other low islands around the world, could vanish entirely in the coming generation—as could most of Bangladesh."

No scientist can know what the future holds for us but the predicted weather patterns are worrying signs that require immediate attention and action.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Enron exposed the flaws in American capitalism

When Enron, one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies declared bankruptcy in the United States in 2001, it was a profound wake up call to further check on corporate governance.

What emerged became known as 'the Enron scandal' which revealed the predatory and corrupting side the American corporate system.

The subsequent collapse of the telecoms company Worldcom in 2002, which surpassed Enron to become the biggest bankruptcy in US history showed that the capitalist economic model had glaring flaws that needed to be fixed.

The twin scandals of Enron and Worldcom proved that these organisations were irresponsible at the highest level and their actions or lack of actions affected the lives of millions of Americans.

Kenneth Lay, the chairman and CEO of Enron was a person closely linked to the Republican party. He was one of America's highest-paid CEOs, earning a $42.4 million compensation package in 1999.

As events unfolded in Enron, Lay was indicted for fraud and lying but he died and never faced his trial.

How did things go so wrong in America's top elite companies?

An article on CNET reads, "What's surprising about WorldCom is the very basic nature of what happened," says Karen Nelson, a professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business. "Enron was all about complex partnerships and accounting for special-purpose entities. But what WorldCom did wrong is something that's taught in the first few weeks of a core financial-reporting class. That's why people are asking, given its basic nature and its magnitude, "How could it have been missed."

On July 1, WorldCom provided the Securies Exchange Commission with a statement detailing what the company knew to date about its accounting problems. The statement explained that in 2001 as well as the first quarter of 2002, WorldCom had taken line costs--mostly fees associated with its use of third-party network services and facilities--and wrongly booked them as capital expenditures.

Enron and Worldcom have gambled on their accounting.

Adam Smith, the proponent of the present model of capitalism and his metaphor of 'invisible hand' stated in "The Wealth of Nations" has to be reexamined.

Smith argues that in capitalism, an individual pursuing his own good tends also to promote the good of his community, through a principle that he called “the invisible hand” of the market.

Specifically, a free competitive market ensures that those goods and services perceived as most beneficial, efficient, or of highest quality will naturally be those that are most profitable. The mechanism for this, Smith saw as being the free price system.

Smith's theory does not achieve the Utopian dream when large business are driven by greed and exploitation of labour that tends to perpetuate without adequate enforcement rules for oversight.

Since deregulation and globalization are the current trends of the new capitalistic wave, corporate stockholders and investors would need to look beyond the glossy figures of corporate accounts while oversight authorities crackdown hard on suspect practices.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

A backlash against unprincipled politics

For the first time in its history, in the last two days Maldives is witnessing the difficulties of organised labour protests.

The private taxis that form the backbone of public transport in Male have stopped running claiming that recent increase of fuel price by the State Trading Organization is unjustified and are demanding that the price increase be rescinded.

Adding to the transport chaos in Male, on Monday all thirty five cabin crew staff of Maldivian Air Taxi (MAT) have walked out in protest at low pay.

Maldivian Air Taxi is one of two internal airlines offering transfers to tourist resorts, a vital transport link that is critical for tourism.

Tourism is the main industry of Maldives, contributing close to 20% of the GDP of this island nation of 1190 coral islands having a population of 360,000.

Male', the capital island of Maldives has one of the highest population concentrations in the world with more than one quarter of the entire Maldivian population living on it.

Although essential air taxi service has resumed, several of MATs twenty-two planes were grounded and many toursists have been inconvenienced.

Maldives can ill afford to have this kind of chaos when it is heavily dependent on the income that it gets from tourism.

There are no organised labour unions in Maldives, although there is no prohibition of such activity by law.

Collective bargaining is a new phenomenon that is just beginning to emerge out of necessity.

Maldives is among the low-lying small states that faces the threat of the imminent dangers of increasing sea level rise and climate change due to global warming.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Maldives ranks 1st in 'easiest to pay taxes'

I just came across an article published in Dec 2006 by the World Bank and the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP which has ranked the Maldives as the easiest country in which to pay taxes for businesses.

This study bases the claim on the average of the country rankings on total taxes, number of payments and time required to comply.

The Maldives is followed in the rankings by Ireland and then Oman, with many Latin American, African and Former Soviet countries coming last in the list of 175 states.

The study shows the Maldives requires only one tax payment, which takes zero hours to pay, and is only 9.3 percent of a business’s profit, as opposed to the Gambia, where it is 291 percent of profit.

It is certainly commendable for Maldives to have an easy system of paying taxes. It is good for business.

But is it a good system?

The World Bank's executive summary begins, "Taxes are essential to finance public services but there are good and bad ways to collect them."

There must also be more effective and less effective systems of taxation, in so far as paying for public services and reducing the level of poverty is concerned.

There is no personal income tax in Maldives. This means the current tax structure is discriminatory, favouring shareholders of corporations in several respects. These corporations can distribute dividends when they choose or re-invest the earning to grow the business.

The imbalance of wealth distribution has created an elite rich class, in a country that prides itself as a 100 percent Muslim nation.

It is the responsibility of the Islamic system, to create the conditions within the state, where equal opportunity is provided for the development of every individual.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Secularism versus Islam in Malaysia

Malaysia's top civil court, the Federal Court on Wednesday rejected a woman's appeal to be recognized as a Christian, in a landmark case that tested the limits of religious freedom in this moderate Islamic country.

Lina Joy, 43, was born as Azlina Jailani. She started attending church in 1990 and was baptised eight years later. She was given permission to change her name, but "Islam" remained as her religion on her identity card.

She had applied for a name change on her government identity card. The National Registration Department obliged but refused to drop Muslim from the religion column.

She appealed the decision to a civil court but was told she must take it to Islamic Shariah courts. Joy argued that she should not be bound by Shariah law because she is a Christian.

A three-judge Federal Court panel ruled by a 2-1 majority that only the Islamic Shariah Court has the power to allow her to remove the word "Islam" from the religion category on her government identity card.

"She cannot simply at her own whims enter or leave her religion," Judge Ahmad Fairuz said. "She must follow rules."

As a muslim I found the verdict of this case rather intriguing.

There is no compulsion in Islam... (Qur'an 2:256). God has commanded that there is no compulsion in religion for truth stands out from error.

Lina Joy, a Christian has made a choice and left Islam many years back. The only Islam left for her is the print on her identity card. It has nothing to do with the conviction of her faith.

Therefore, for the mortal Judge Ahmad Fairuz to insist that she cannot leave Islam is meaningless because she already has.