Our politicians have the mandate to define the destiny of our nation and our people, in the new political reality of the Maldives. As Minister Nasheed pointed out in his blog, the new reality is that the big picture is not a mandate of just the President, but the totality of the political leadership.

The question is whether our politicians can think out of the box in their new straight jackets. In the earlier paradigm, top politicians were also the top civil servants and therefore their responsibility was to please the President of the People rather than the People. They were bureaucrats more than they were the people’s representatives.

So when people talked about their needs and their rights, they always answered as if they were accountable more to keeping the status qou than ensuring that the people’s rights were ensured. So, politicians would go like this:

We can’t have single session schools
We don’t have the funds to build schools
We can’t get competent teachers
We don’t have the means to pay good teachers

We can’t provide housing to the people
We can’t put up flats because there is no manpower
We can’t provide housing loans because
We don’t have a legal framework for collecting payments

We can’t provide employment
We don’t have the means to train all these people
We can’t get young people trained because
We don’t have sufficeint resources

We can’t develop this country because
We don’t have any resources
We can’t get grants and loans
We can’t be rich
We shall be Poor

In the new political reality where politicians and the government will be accountable to the people, the flock would be led by politicians with “possibility thinking” and a passion for realizing the aspirations of the people: politicians who can think out of the box!

The question right now is who will lead the flock of politicians as the President who serve the People rather than a People who serve the President!

The People will Decide!