Gafaru windfarm - 75megawhat?? Dont get excited, people!

In the last 5 years Maldives has seen mega project like no other country. Under Gayoom we built a 300 million dollar transshipment port in Ihavandhippolhu; 1 billion dollar Moon Bay Marina in Male; 2 billion dollar Hulhumale Phase 2 project developed by Dubai World; 1 billion dollar port and logistics city developed by Boskalis International – and now Anni is giving us a 200 million dollar wind farm in Gafaru! Wow! The thought of those huge turbines rotating on a windy day really gives me a hard-on.

I honestly don’t understand how we could be so easily fooled into singing praise to our leaders. Just have a look at the comments on the article on Haveeru. I, Zaeem Tubbs hereby tell all my fellow Maldivians not to get turned on so easily. Only one commentator has really thought about this. He says there is no wind to harness that kind of power in the central Maldives. For God’s sake we are in the doldrums.

I also want to as a few questions about this project.

1. Who is funding this project? What are the terms and conditions?
2. Just like in the case of all the other ‘mega projects’ there is a lot of name throwing ( Boskalis never was into building Gulhifalhu. It was some Srilankan middleman named Raj). Now some people like Minivannews are very keen to throw names “GE Energy, a US$30 billion company, will carry out a feasibility study and build the wind farm on a coral reef in Gaafaru in North Male’ atoll” very very sexy, indeed! For God’s sake GE isn’t going to dump 200million dollars on a bloody coral reef.
3. Falcon International? Falcon, who? Is that the investor? My google search gave me 2 companies that have this name. A Singaporean company named Falcon Energy Group and a two man UK company that has the same name. If I, Zaeemu Tubbs, have the brains to figure out that none of these two companies have the capacity to raise 200 million dollars, every Maldivian fisherman’s son and daughter should have the same ability.
4. President Anni unveiled this massive project in front of the media and public. Why didn’t he give any details as to who are the shareholders, what are the sources of funds and what are the terms and conditions that we agreed on?

So, here is my advice to my fellow country men – JUST DON’T GET TO EXCITED!

Anni, Gayoom and Presidential Commissions

Gayoom had a fetish for commissions. There wasn’t a single thing under the sun for which Gayoom didnt form some sort of a commission during his 30 year reign. Now it looks like Anni is also developing the same fetish for commissions.

This Riyaasee (dhiyaasee??) commission to look into the scandals and corruption cases of the previous commission has been operating for I don’t know how many months now. If anni really wants to seriously look into Gayoom regime’s corruption cases he would have nominated people capable of doing good work to this commission. This Sheikah Hussain Rasheed Ahmed Sheikh aka ring leader of the Adhaalath cult is one of them. And Adduvas man Haseen who flunked his Shariah and law programme at Islamic University Malaysia is the other. And the chairman of this commission is a thug. The two decent members Shabab Rasheed and Idham Muizzu have no voice. Adugadha meehunge thaa rugginavaanee dho.

The only objective of this commission is to make sure that they could continue to warm their chairs so that they could have their fat salaries. For god’s sake its been almost one year. Tell me one case that this commission has investigated and brought before the courts. Its just a lot of talk about nothing - summoning Gayoom; detaining Jangiya’s wife; asking jangiya’s wife to give her underwear odor; grilling moklhi seytu redwave Saleem; and now the talk about some island being given to Champa.

Dont get excited, people! For God’s sake this has got absolutely nothing to do with delivering justice for the common man. This is a bloody sick game being played by ANNI. Who do these politicians think they are trying to fool? This is a sick game of raazuvaa being played by Gayoom anni using the likes of adhalath sheikh, jangiya, adduvas haseen at our cost – you and I are paying for their sick game!!