The Man Who Held a Cabinet Meeting Underwater — And Was Jailed for Terrorism by the Government He Replaced: Maldives' Democratic Constitution
Maldives — Constitution Profile
| 📅 Active Since | August 7, 2008 |
| 🏛️ Government Type | Presidential Republic |
| 🌍 Capital | Malé |
| 📜 Total Constitutions | 6 (1932, 1942, 1953, 1954, 1968, 2008) |
| ☪️ Unique Clause | Non-Muslims cannot be citizens — constitutionally mandated |
| 🌊 Existential Threat | Rising sea levels could submerge the nation by 2100 |
In October 2009, the President of the Maldives strapped on scuba gear, dove beneath the Indian Ocean with his cabinet ministers, and held the world's first underwater government meeting — signing a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. The stunt made headlines everywhere. Two years later, that same president was ousted in what he called a coup at gunpoint. Two years after that, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on terrorism charges. This is a country where the constitution was supposed to change everything — and where everything changed anyway, just not in the way anyone expected.
Six Constitutions in Less Than a Century — And the First One Lasted Nine Months
Most nations can count their constitutions on one hand. The Maldives has gone through six of them since 1932, a churn of legal frameworks that reflects just how turbulent the islands' path to stable governance has been. The first written constitution was ratified on December 22, 1932 — a genuine milestone for a sultanate that had long run on the personal authority of monarchs. It had 92 articles, a bill of rights, freedom of expression, protection against arbitrary arrest, and a functioning parliament. It also lasted approximately nine months before collapsing under a food revolt triggered by new trading laws that angered foreign merchants and the public alike.
The founders of that first constitution were banished to Colombo. The document was stripped back to 84 articles, then eventually suspended in 1940. What followed was a string of constitutional experiments: a 17-article "small constitution" in 1942 that handed power almost entirely to the monarch, a brief republic in 1953 that was overthrown in less than a year, a return to monarchy, independence from Britain in 1965, and finally the second republic in 1968. By the time the sixth and current constitution arrived in 2008, the Maldives had already been through more constitutional upheaval than most countries experience in five centuries.
Thirty Years Under Asia's Longest-Serving Dictator — and the Tsunami That Cracked the Wall
Between 1978 and 2008, one man governed the Maldives: Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Educated at Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University, Gayoom styled himself as both a political leader and an Islamic scholar, positioning himself as the "supreme authority to propagate the tenets of Islam." Those who disagreed with his religious or political interpretations were banished to remote islands. Opposition was silenced, dissidents were jailed, and the media was tightly controlled. Gayoom holds the distinction of being the longest-serving dictator in modern Asian history — a record he built while the Maldives became internationally famous for luxury resorts that served champagne to tourists while most Maldivians lived in conditions more comparable to sub-Saharan Africa.
The crack in his regime came from an unlikely source. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck the Maldives with devastating force. As Gayoom negotiated millions in international relief aid, donor countries and organizations used their leverage to push for democratic reforms. Freedom of speech, a free press, and a multiparty system were demanded as conditions for aid. Gayoom agreed — and inadvertently opened the door to the very constitution that would end his rule. A constitutional assembly began drafting in 2004, pressure from civil society and international actors sustained momentum for three years, and the result was ratified on August 7, 2008: the Maldives' first genuinely democratic constitution.
The President Jailed for Democracy — Who Then Won an Election From Prison
Mohamed Nasheed had spent years as a dissident journalist under Gayoom's rule, arrested repeatedly, named a prisoner of conscience twice by Amnesty International, and subjected to what a UN working group described in 1995 as arbitrary detention. By 2003 he had founded the Maldivian Democratic Party, and in 2008 — riding the wave of the new constitution — he defeated Gayoom in the country's first genuinely competitive presidential election. He was immediately described internationally as the "Mandela of the Maldives." David Cameron once said Nasheed was among the five world leaders he'd most want on a night out. Nasheed held an underwater cabinet meeting. He pledged to make the Maldives the world's first carbon-neutral nation. For a brief moment, his presidency seemed like the story the 2008 constitution was written for.
It ended on February 7, 2012. After 22 consecutive days of opposition protests and a police mutiny, Nasheed submitted a handwritten resignation letter in front of the media. His vice president was sworn in as president within hours. Nasheed immediately told the world he had been forced out at gunpoint — what he called a coup led by loyalists of the man he had defeated. Within three years, the government arrested him on terrorism charges for having ordered the arrest of a criminal court judge during his presidency. The trial lasted three weeks. He was denied the right to present a defense. The sentence: 13 years. The UN called the proceedings "vastly unfair, arbitrary and disproportionate." Amnesty International called it a travesty of justice. The US Senate passed a resolution condemning his imprisonment.
The Constitution That Made Islam a Condition of Citizenship
Of all the provisions in the 2008 constitution — separation of powers, an independent judiciary, guaranteed rights of assembly and expression — one clause stands apart from anything found in most liberal democracies. The Maldivian constitution explicitly requires that to be a citizen of the Maldives, a person must be a Muslim. Non-Muslims cannot hold citizenship. To stand for president, the constitution requires that a candidate must be a Muslim and a follower of a Sunni school of Islam. To be a member of parliament, the same religious requirements apply. The constitution's entire bill of rights comes with a recurring caveat: rights and freedoms are guaranteed "subject to the tenets of Islam." That phrase places enormous authority in whoever claims to interpret those tenets — which, under Gayoom and his successors, has never been a neutral exercise.
The practical result has been a legal framework where freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and other constitutional guarantees can be circumscribed by religious interpretation at any moment. A 2011 opposition rally demanding the closure of massage parlours and an apology from President Nasheed for allowing the UN Human Rights Commissioner to criticize the practice of flogging women — a constitutionally allowed punishment — drew some of the largest crowds the Maldives had seen in years. The constitution was written to protect rights. But its built-in religious caveat has repeatedly been the tool used to curtail them.
A Country Writing Its Constitution Under the Shadow of Disappearing Altogether
There is a detail about the Maldives that no constitutional text can fully address: the islands sit on average just 1.5 meters above sea level. Scientists have predicted the Maldives could be completely submerged by 2100 if current rates of sea level rise continue. Nasheed described the Maldives as the world's "canary in the coalmine" — a nation that would be the first to disappear if the world failed to act on climate change. His underwater cabinet meeting was a stunt, but it carried a genuine political message: this country is debating constitutional governance on land that may not exist in 80 years.
The 2008 constitution doesn't mention climate change. It was written to address decades of authoritarian rule, not geological timelines. But every political crisis, every struggle over the separation of powers, every debate about judicial independence, has happened in a country where the most fundamental question — whether there will be a country at all in a century — remains unanswered. In 2009, Nasheed announced a plan to begin setting aside tourism revenue to buy land in other countries, so that Maldivians would have somewhere to go. No other government on earth has had to write a constitutional backup plan for the literal disappearance of its territory.
The Half-Brother Who Won the Presidency — And Then Lost It to a Court
In November 2013, Abdulla Yameen — the half-brother of the man whose 30-year dictatorship the 2008 constitution was designed to end — won the Maldivian presidential election. He beat Nasheed in a runoff after the Supreme Court controversially annulled the results of the first round, which Nasheed had won with a clear plurality. Yameen's presidency oversaw significant
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