Archive for September, 2010

11 September, Male’, Maldives, Maldivestoday.com,

The parliament of Maldives passed a bill on levying tax from tourism related business. The bill named Tourism Goods and Services Tax Bill was ratified by the President on 8th September was passed by the People’s Majlis on 26 August.

The Act states the ways in which goods and services tax will be charged on the price of goods and services sold to tourists from resorts, hotels, guest houses, picnic islands, tourist vessels, and other services provided to tourists in the Maldives.

Under to the Act, a tax will be levied on the following services and items sold to tourists.
1. Room rates charged by resorts, hotels, picnic islands, and guest houses
2. Room and bed rates charged by tourist vessels
3. Prices of all goods and services, in addition to those included in numbers 1 and 2 above, sold to tourists from resorts, hotels, guest houses, picnic islands, tourist vessels
4. Prices and charges of goods and services sold to tourists from diving schools, shops, spas, and water sports facilities in tourist resorts, hotels, guest houses and tourist vessels
5. Travel planner charges
6. Domestic transportation fares for tourists

The travel agents of the Maldives are disgruntled because the article 2 clause B of the bill is not clear. Its members have recently been in the TV to show their frustration over lack of discussion with them and due the unclarity of the clause of the bill. According to them they not sure if the 3.5% will be charged from their sales or from their markup. They say if it is charged from their markup its bearable. However, if its charged from their sales it will be devastating for them. Because their average margin is not more then 4%.

In a press release the association of travel agents called MATATO has also expressed their concern that the time limit to implement the regulation is too quick less than 5 months as they have already signed contracts with foreign tour operators for the year ahead. The travel agents are also requesting to rephrase the clause and give ample time to recruit and train staff in the accounting department for tax.

While the tax bill is ratified another amendment to tourism act has allowed resort owners to extend their lease period of resort for a period of 50 years. Currently the resorts are leased for a period of 25 to 35 years maximum.

The following article was published on Law Society Gazette by Jonathan Rayner

A crisis is brewing in the paradise islands of the Maldives.

The government, led by the nation’s first ever democratically elected president, is said to be undermining the freshly minted constitution, while there are fears that Muslim extremists might insinuate themselves into power. The judiciary is said to be under pressure from the government.

The country also faces dangers of a different nature, most notably global warming and the rising sea levels that threaten, literally, to drown this nation of 350,000 people. There are more than 1,000 islands, of which just 200 have people living on them, and none of them rises higher than 2.3 metres above sea level at its highest point. That is lower than the men’s world high jump record of 2.45 metres.

On a happier note, the people of the Maldives pay no income tax; the government generates revenue by selling fish and leasing land to the tourist industry instead. And the language, unique to the islands, has no word for ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘please’ – everybody knows everybody else, so there is no need for formality.

So what has precipitated the current political situation, which some say is threatening the rule of law in the country?

The country’s president, Mohamed Nasheed, has been in office since 2008, the year that a new constitution was ratified separating the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. Nasheed, dubbed by some the ‘Mandela of the Maldives’, was a prisoner of conscience under his predecessor, president Gayoom, and was widely expected to be a model defender of the new spirit of democracy.

Critics of his regime, however, suggest that his government has deprived parliament of information, ordered the arrests of opposition MPs, and connived in attacks on the judiciary.

Dr Hassan Saeed visited the Law Society to draw all this to my attention. Saeed was the attorney general when Gayoom was president and when the current president, Nasheed, was repeatedly jailed for political dissent. Saeed was also an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2008 elections, and is the leader of a political party opposed to president Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party.

Saeed would like an independent delegation of UK lawyers to visit his country and report on what is happening there. British and Commonwealth lawyers and academics helped draft the Maldives’ 2008 constitution. They should share his indignation, he says, at what he claims is the government’s wilful undermining of that constitution.

So far, so convincing – except what does the present attorney general of the Maldives, Husnu Suood, have to say about this? He was in London last week and I was able to speak to him at the Maldives High Commission.

Suood’s version of events was very different from that told to me by his predecessor. Suood told me president Nasheed is frustrated at every turn by the opposition parties in parliament, who are in the majority and block his every policy. ‘They want the government to fail to deliver what it has promised. It’s only through president Nasheed’s failure that the opposition will ever regain the presidency,’ Suood said.

Muslim fundamentalists are exerting an increasing influence, with the result that parliament is bringing a vote of no confidence against those ministers of state who have made Muslim studies at school optional (rather than compulsory), and who have normalised relationships with Israel. They are also angered by the privatisation of the airport because, they reason, Israel would now be able to use it to launch bombing raids against their Muslim neighbours. ‘Some of us are better at geography than that,’ Suood said.

Suood said there were ‘teething problems in the new democracy, but he was ‘optimistic that the rule of law will win through in the end.’

My final question was to ask Suood what the international legal community could do to help the Maldives. ‘We would like a delegation of lawyers, led by the Law Society of England and Wales, to visit the Maldives and report on the situation there,’ he said.

So it seems that Suood and his predecessor at least agree on one thing. Perhaps international lawyers should take them up on their offer and find out the facts behind what appears to be trouble in paradise.

Following is press statement issued by The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is alarmed by a spike in hostile words and actions against journalists and media organisations in the Maldives.

According to information received from IFJ affiliate, the Maldives Journalists’ Association (MJA), the offices of the privately owned TV broadcaster, VTV, were vandalised by unknown persons in the early hours of Monday, August 30. Though those responsible have not been identified, a number of verbal attacks on VTV by elected officials in the Maldives may have contributed to a climate of intolerance against the broadcaster, the MJA reported.

The MJA has drawn attention to a threat of action held out against VTV by Reeco Moosa Manik, leader of the Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) parliamentary group, on August 17. This followed what the MDP leader characterised as “repeated” broadcasts of news stories critical of his party.

On August 29, Moosa Manik launched a verbal attack on two independent TV channels, VTV and DhiTV, alleging that these were run with “ill-gotten money” and have no other purpose than the “character assassination” of political figures whose views do not coincide with their owners.

The MJA reports that Moosa Manik has repeatedly threatened journalists and media organisations at political rallies of the MDP. Earlier, on August 5, the MJA reported that Moosa Manik tried to stop a reporter for the VTV station, Zeena Zahir, as she was gathering material for a news report in the parliament building.

Another serious incident involving the President of the municipal administration in the Maldives’ capital city of Male has come to attention. The official concerned, Sarangu Adam Manik, reportedly attacked a DhiTV cameraman on August 25, snatching his camera while he was on assignment inside municipal council premises.

“The IFJ supports the MJA’s effort to dissuade the officials responsible for these incidents, and indeed all individuals, from persisting with such hostile actions against journalists and media organisations”, IFJ Asia Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.

“The physical and verbal attacks on media organisations that have been recurring in the Maldives could create an environment that would be adverse to press freedom in the country.”

The MJA has reminded the individuals concerned that the Maldives has set up an independent media oversight body by statute, which any individual with specific grievances regarding the conduct of any media organisation is free to approach.