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Fathullah Jameel's pact with
the devil 18 July 2004
Fathullah Jameel was recognised as one of the most talented Maldivians of his generation and as a young man he was promoted to Foreign Minister by former President Ibrahim Nasir. Fathullah's closest friends Maumoon Gayyoom and Zahir Hussain (Haveeru editor) were also promoted into 'foreign service' positions which utilised their multi-lingual skills and, Nasir hoped, would keep them away from the political centre of Male'. Fathullah Jameel's meteoric rise was in part because of his willingness to produce effective propaganda for President Nasir. Young Fathullah was a reasonable artist and he helped a Sri Lankan Tamil art teacher T. Swamipillai (who worked at Majeediya school where Fathullah had been posted as a teacher of Islam) to produce giant portraits of President Nasir for the 26 July Independence Day celebrations. These portraits, resembling a Hindu deity, were placed on trucks with PA systems, forming the vanguard of a noisy procession of people on bikes, holding flags and ringing their bells. At a signal, everyone would yell: 'Long Live Nasir! Nasir the Victorious! Long Live!' The crowds were granted their wish. Thirty years later, Nasir is still alive in Singapore. President Nasir was a dictator; a man of few and often blunt words who lacked the English and Arabic skills needed to attract foreign aid and promote the country's international interests. Unlike his successor Maumoon Gayyoom, President Nasir was not prepared to sacrifice talented people and undermine the future of Maldives. When ill-health forced Nasir to retire in 1978, Fathullah Jameel could have been the new leader if he had been willing to moderate his public and personal behaviour, but he found the well-lubricated diplomatic lifestyle far more attractive. Jameel had graduated with a Shahadeh el-Aliya from el-Azhar university in Cairo (where he was known as FJ Abdulla) and also did a diploma at the University of Eyen el-Shams in Alexandria. He found time to lead an active nightlife in Egypt, and regularly travelled into Europe with his fellow Maldivian scholars for work-experience at a brewery in Germany. The fall of Nasir, and rise of Maumoon Gayyoom, had no negative impact on the career of Fathullah Jameel. His old girlfriend Nasreena Ibrahim had married his best friend Gayyoom so Jameel found himself with a new president who, unlike Nasir, needed his discretion and friendship as much as his manipulative skills. Fathullah is the only cabinet minister who isn't afraid of Gayyoom, and he runs his Foreign ministry as he wishes. He even runs the country when Gayyoom is away, and can have people hired and fired at will in many important government agencies. He has described presidential secretary Abdullah Shahid, Dr Mohamed Munavvar and Ibrahim Hussain Zaki, as 'his boys'. Fathullah is the chairman of Maldives National Shipping Management Limited (MNSML) in Singapore, and was chairman of Dhiraagu telecom until recently. In the early part of Gayyoom's rule, with the president thumbing his nose at decadent western democracies and courting despots like Castro, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, Fathullah was a fountain of inspiration prompting the awarding of a resort to the PLO and the use of the Maldive national flag on a PLO plane that crashed in the Arctic during its delivery flight. Fathullah also organised a secret visit to Maldives by the Panamanian dictator Noriega to discuss an arms deal. The then Defence Minister Ilyas Ibrahim and Noriega went swimming together and compared torsos while their admiring bodyguards looked on. In the 1990s, while the Baathist Gayyoom sprouted mullah wings in response to the rise of Wahhabi petro-dollar Islam, Fathullah's personal style remained unchanged. He lectured and cajoled foreign diplomats and officials, speaking knowingly of the Maldive islands and the hungry people he never visited. To his Maldive confidantes, Fathullah boasted how he fudged the figures submitted to World Bank and International Finance Corporation because Gayyoom and his associates did not want promotion to the Developing Countries category which would mean they would have to settle the nation's debts and lose preferential financial treatment. This deception did not benefit most Maldivians. They were kept poor and desperate as their aid money and the tourist and fishing industries further enriched the incredibly greedy Male' elites and their NSS militia. Modern Maldives has a population of less than 300,000 people, and the outer islanders' poverty has always been the result of deliberate Male' policies designed to provide unlimited wealth and opportunities for the rulers to invest their money only in Male' and overseas. Fathullah Jameel has been one of the main propagandists and organisers of this diabolical and short-sighted scheme. He has ignored Gayyoom's and his friends' gross excesses and shared happily in the spoils, while lying to the world about the 'peace and happiness' of islands that are in reality seething with injustice, deprivation and discontent. To an extent, he has kept the UN at bay by refusing to ratify the human rights convention, and as an unelected Presidential appointee to the Majlis he has always been a loud voice against any reformers. Within the Commonwealth group, which he regards as polite and accommodating, Fathullah grins and votes with practised hypocrisy. The performance at Abouja was vintage Jameel. In many ways, his life is a metaphor of the abysmal failure of the Gayyoom vision for Maldives. Jameel is part owner of the Kandooma resort and owns a house in Male', but it is to his personal island of Maadhoo Finolhu just behind Kandooma that he goes for rest. There, with his cognac and Cuban cigars, like an ignorant tourist oblivious of the surrounding poverty and oppression, Jameel sits in self-satisfied stupor. The grand deceiver has even tricked himself. |
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Maldives Culture is an independent internet magazine of Maldive cultural issues.
Editors and translators: Michael O'Shea and Fareesha Abdulla, Australia
We invite contributions from Maldivians and others interested in Maldives.
Contributions and comments - mc_editors@hotmail.com
