Unless a complete cleansing of dictator's legacy is done, democratically-elected leaders will be vulnerable.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: “Dictatorships don’t always die when the dictator leaves office — I learned this lesson quickly. My country, the Maldives, voted out President Mamoon back in 2008 in historic elections that swept away three decades of his authoritarian rule. And yet the dictatorship bequeathed to the infant democracy a looted treasury, a ballooning budget deficit and a rotten judiciary.”
These were the words of the former president of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, after he was ousted. This happened when his government arrested a senior judge on charges of alleged corruption. This gave the opposition parties and certain religious groups in the country to conspire with the army and the police to get rid of Nasheed’s government.
This should be a lesson for all fledgling democracies, especially in this part of the world. Unless a complete cleansing of the legacy left behind by dictators is done, democratically-elected leaders will be vulnerable.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 16th, 2012.
