Current MDP Chairperson Maria Didi on BBC Crossing Continents – Maldives (Feb 2005)
BBC: Among the younger candidates is a british trained barrister Maria Didi. She’s a state prosecutor, heavily pregnant and one of the small but growing band of educated Maldivians who’s not seeking revolution but is seeking change. I put it to her that since the president’s reform programme was unveiled last June (2004), progress has been slow.
Maria: There has been so many events since then I don’t think it would have gone any faster. It needed time to settle down as well, you know. Talk of reforms for all of us to think about it. To see how well you know, how it will be best for our country because there has been as you know we are only 300,000 people so if we are talking about all the institutions being separate and everything we have not that much educated people also. Its idealistic to talk about everything being different.
BBC: Do you really feel the country, the nation is ready for the change and they are going to demand it?
Maria: I think the nation is becoming ready for change. This debate came up in June. Otherwise may be people have been thinking about change, haven’t been really talking about change, I don’t know whether you’ve been to the islands but the way they think is really different from what how we think, so in a sense like you know, I don’t know how ready they are for change.
Excerpt from BBC’s Crossing Contents (Feb 2005)
Presenter: Julian Pettifer
Producer: Simon Hardy