According to the CNI account, then President Mohammed Nasheed had ordered the removal of the police from the Artificial Beach on the night of February 7. At that time cadres of then ruling MDP and the Opposition were in an eye ball –to-eye ball confrontation. And the frustrated police joined the anti-President protests the next day.

Another point clearly brought by the CNI was that Nasheed had assured the army commander Ibrahim Didi that the MDP cadres would not resort to violence but the promise did not hold.

Nasheed and his colleagues are also disputing the CNI conclusion that Male Police Commissioner was asked to resign at midnight of February 6-7 and that the Defence Minister changed the MNDF ground commander when he declined to arrest the protesting policemen.

The MDP views the Time-line as a ‘blatant attempt at concealing the truth by pre-empting an impartial inquiry’.

The three-member CNI was appointed by President Mohamed Waheed Hassan to investigate the controversial circumstances that had brought him to power. MDP boycotted the probe saying it didn’t have any hope of a credible or impartial probe.

‘These investigators are the very people against whom we have levelled several charges’, it said in justification of its boycott. Two days ago, the government restructured the commission by inducting in Ahmed ‘Gahaa’ Saeed proposed by Nasheed but the decision came a day too late as the turn of events show.

MDP is incensed. Its spokesperson, Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, in a statement said: “It is unacceptable that a committee that has been discredited by the civil society, members of the public and the international community should proceed to make public its findings, ahead of the commencement of the work of a restructured commission”.

He went on to say: “The Timeline is incomplete, biased and reveals the malicious intent of the Commission”. His grouse is that the findings were released without taking the testimony of neither Nasheed nor any MDP member. From this reasoning flows his thesis that ‘the real mandate of this Commission is to conceal the truth and absolve the perpetrators of the coup from guilt’.

President’s Office Spokesperson Abbas Adil Riza, has washed his hands off the CNI saying the commission is independent and the government has no views about it..”

“The government’s view is that the inquiry is fully independent and that it can ask for help where it wishes,” Riza told Minivan News. In the same breath he added: “We see no wrong-doing in [the commission] requesting public support.”

Asked whether canvassing public opinion was in the commission’s mandate when it was set up, Riza stated that the commission had a mandate to “find the facts from January 14 to February 7”. Asked whether the timeline was relevant, given that the reconstituted commission would presumably be starting from scratch, he replied: “It is up to the commission to determine that.”

Attorney General Azima Shukoor is quoted as saying that administrative work had begun to formulate the new CNI.

She told local newspaper Haveeru that the new Commission needed to be established by a new presidential decree, which was currently being drafted in time for President Mohamed Waheed’s return from the UK. He was in London to attend Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee celebrations.

Put simply, the political situation in Maldives is as fluid as ever before. Truth should not be allowed to become a casualty whatever be the compulsions of polarization on the political scene.

The former President Nasheed has been demanding early elections. His wish is unlikely to be fulfilled in the short to medium term as the present dispensation is busy settling down to its basic task of good governance.

Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) is opposed to early elections. Its senior, Abdul Muhsin has said that even if the Commission of National Inquiry (CNI) concludes its work, talks, elections will not be held before 2013 as the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) wants.

In Robert Casey, Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs Sub-committee, there is a votary for fresh elections in the Maldives at the earliest date possible.

Nasheed is visiting various world capitals to tell his side of the story to whoever listens. He probably should do the same at home by meeting the CNI himself or deputing someone on his behalf. Every opportunity to express oneself and to apprise other’s of one’s views should not be allowed to go by default.