“I had no choice but to resign”: Nasheed’s testimony to CoNI
by Azra Naseem
On 4 July, 2012, Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives until 7th February that year, testified at the Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI) on how his government came to an end. Present were co-chairs of the Commission Justice Selvam and Ismail Shafeeu, members Dr Ibrahim Yasir, Dr Fawaz Shareef and Ahmed Saeed. Observing for the international community were Sir Bruce Robertson and Professor John Packer.
In essence, my statement is very small…I was forced to resign. I resigned under duress. I was threatened. If I did not resign within a stipulated period it would endanger mine and my family’s life. I understood they were going to harm a number of other citizens, party members. They were going to literally sack the town. I felt that I had no other option, other than to resign.
Despite CoNI being a national inquiry looking into the highly suspicious end of a government elected by the people, all testimonies collected have been kept from the public. Having come into possession of a copy of the transcript of Nasheed’s spoken testimony to CoNI on 4 July, I have summarised its contents and shared it with you here. What is contained here is not Nasheed’s entire testimony that day, but only the parts concerning the last few hours of his presidency. Care has been taken, however, to ensure no information has been taken taken out of context, added, or deleted from the text and to remain faithful to Nasheed’s words as contained in the transcript.