Three top ministers resign from President Gayoom's cabinet in one week. Their publicly stated reasons for quitting all point to the Maldives budget deficit, reportedly around four billion rufiyaa. That's about one third of the annual budget in a country that does not have deficit spending. However, there is speculation that one or more of the ministers may also be planning to run for the presidency. The tourism and finance minister already have been replaced with well-known, experienced people and the trade minister quit just one day after telling the Majlis that certain development plans could bring in some revenue to close the budget gap.
Here are pictures of the Maldives Afternoon program switching into high gear to break the news. Waseem is c0-hosting the show for Munaz, who is leaving for his studies in two weeks. We need to start searching for a new male host. Shifla read the news and did an excellent job.
The question is... what's really going on in the government? Maldives does not have a pundit class like we do in the US, endlessly yapping on talk programs with their speculation about what's going on behind the scenes of the administration. There are some opinion columnists for the newspapers and some talk show hosts on radio but for some reason people don't want to give their opinions on TV. The brain trust at TVM put their heads together to try and book a discussion segment on the changes in the cabinet. All the possible guests were not available or said no.
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