In the first ever live call-in with a serving president, President Mohamed Nasheed took questions from the public on local radio channel DhiFM’s one-to-one program on Friday. President Nasheed addressed a number of issues and answered questions on subjects ranging from election pledge’s of the government, the electricity tariff hike and media subsidies.
Radio channel DhiFM requested public to send in questions in the days before the show via email and text messages.
The president said in that in the new year, “My determination and goal is finding ways to fulfil the government’s key electoral pledges.”
When asked about the rumours that some political parties wanted to overthrow the government, Nasheed said, it could only be done within the bounds of the law.
The president said that he did not favour adding to recurrent expenditure and praised private broadcasters for their efficient operations with a small number of staff when questioned about media subsidies.
On electricity tariff increase Nasheed said he regrets that electricity tariffs had to be increased which broke his election campaign promise not to do so. President apologised for this and said that the hike was temporary. He also highlighted targeted subsidies introduced for poor income families who will struggle with this increase.
Providing affordable housing is one of key pledges of the current government. On questions related to this he said an agreement had been reached with Indian company, Tata, but the project was delayed due to a dispute over the 11 percent interest proposed by the company.
The president said that government wanted to ensure that citizens would not have to pay more than Rf3,500 a month for the housing units. He further added that the government hoped to sign contracts with five companies in January 2010 to construct 4,000 housing units.
President Nasheed also made hold a mid-term presidential election, during his 2008 presidential election campaign second round. On this the president said the thinking behind it was to assess the political landscape in the country after emerging from a dictatorship where free and fair elections could not be guaranteed.
Nasheed also added, the first opportunity to take stock of the support for political parties came during 2009 parliamentary elections.
“All political parties contested. Those who advocated for a mid-term election won only two seats. And of all those two seats, it is questionable to what extent they belong to the party,” he said according to Minivan News.
In the May 2009 parliamentary elections, Maldivian Democratic Party won 51,184 votes while the main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party won 40,886 votes. However, Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party controls more parliamentary seats in the Majilis.
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