Legislation against antisocial behaviour

Maldives Attorney General Husnu Sood is introducing a bill to the parliament intended to penalise and prevent antisocial behaviour.

When such a bill is passed and enacted into law, it will give the necessary powers to the police and the courts to deal with antisocial behaviour targeted in the bill. Such an Act would become an important tool to combat increasing gang-related violence, theft and disorderly conduct that disrupts public peace and harmony.

The Nasheed government and his Attorney General should be lauded for taking this initiative to prevent antisocial behaviour for the first time in our history.

It is also worth noting that much of the serious crimes, violence and theft also has a direct link to drug trafficking and addiction to it mainly among the youth in Maldives. For thirty years, the previous government took a lax attitude against drug traffickers and failed to provide proper rehabilitation and treatment to addicts. The Nasheed government has to demonstrate that it has the political will to lock up the traffickers and petty peddlers to serve out their full sentence. In the past such convicted criminals managed to come back to the streets without serving out their full sentence either because the jails were full or for other reasons.

Even if our government can deal with the serious crimes of the gangster groups and the drug barons, that would be good a beginning towards a society that maintains social harmony. It was only recently that President Nasheed participated in an event organised by the Municipality in collaboration with the Maldives Defence Force to clean up the litter dumped by public littering in all the wards of Male'. Clearly, we still have a long way to go to become a civil society which has determined its acceptable social norms and standards. Parents and teachers of schools will have to play a vital role to instill such civic norms in our young children so that our society can become a better and safer place for everyone eventually.

Our country is at the crossroad to install democratic reforms from a prolonged totalitarian form of political governance. The benefits of such reform can only be realised if members of our society can coexist peaceably. This is a change even the rich and powerful will happily welcome.