COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: Maldivian security forces locked down parliament on orders from the president Monday, leading to clashes after opposition lawmakers stormed the compound in an attempt to vote on whether to impeach the parliamentary speaker.
President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has been accused of rolling back democratic gains the Maldives has made since becoming a multiparty democracy in 2008.
A no-confidence motion against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed was scheduled to have been taken up Monday, according to the opposition. It said the motion had support from 45 lawmakers in the 85-member house, which if it had succeeded would have challenged the president’s power.
The government, however, said no voting had been scheduled for Monday.
Members of the armed forces padlocked the gates of parliament on orders from Yameen, and lawmakers “were forcibly prevented from entering the parliamentary compound,” the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party said.
Some opposition lawmakers broke through the barrier, but they were forcibly thrown out by military and police who even pepper-sprayed them, said party spokesman Hamid Abdul Ghafoor.
In a statement, the opposition party called Yameen’s action “desperate, illegal and unconstitutional.”
The president’s office said all the members have been informed that the next parliament sittings will be on July 31.
The parliament secretariat asked Maldives forces to strengthen security in the parliament building premises due to security concerns as certain parties were calling for protests near parliament, the office said in a statement.
Maldives police said the government restricted access to the parliament building as the session was canceled and that police were asked to intervene by Maldives National Defense Force in “clearing out individuals who forcefully entered the parliament building.”
In a statement, police also said they are investigating the obstruction of police duty by the lawmakers who broke into the restricted area.
The support for the no-confidence motion was uncertain after the election commission announced last week that four members who supported the motion had lost their seats because they left the ruling party.
Yameen’s control over parliament is threatened by a new understanding between the Maldives’ former strongman and its first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed. The Maldivian Democratic Party routed Yameen’s party in local council elections earlier this year.
A similar opposition bid to oust the speaker was defeated in March with no dissenting votes after opposition lawmakers were either evicted or walked out from the vote following a dispute over problems with the electronic voting system.
The opposition coalition’s plan to wrest the parliamentary majority was aimed at reforming the judiciary, elections commission and other bodies perceived as being partial toward Yameen.
In March, Nasheed and former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and two other parties signed an agreement to form an opposition alliance.
Maumoon runs a rival faction within the Progressive Party of Maldives, which is led by the current president, his half brother.
Nasheed was jailed in 2015 for 13 years for ordering the arrest of a senior judge when he was president in 2012.
He received asylum in Britain last year after traveling there on medical leave. Three other leading politicians have also been jailed after trials criticized internationally for a lack of due process.
Maldives is a South Asian archipelago known for its luxury tourist resorts.
Security forces shut Maldives Parliament, leading to clashes
Security forces shut Maldives Parliament, leading to clashes
Near record number of small boat migrants reach UK in 2025
- The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday
LONDON: The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday.
The tally comes as Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party Reform UK surges in popularity ahead of bellwether local elections in May.
With Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer increasingly under pressure over the thorny issue, his interior minister Shabana Mahmood has proposed a drastic reduction in protections for refugees and the ending of automatic benefits for asylum seekers.
Home Office data as of midday on Wednesday showed a total of 41,472 migrants landed on England’s southern coast in 2025 after making the perilous Channel crossing from northern France.
The record of 45,774 arrivals was recorded in 2022 under the last Conservative government.
The Home Office is due to confirm the final figure for 2025 later Thursday.
Former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak vowed to “stop the boats” when he was in power.
Ousted by Starmer in July 2024, he later said he regretted the slogan because it was too “stark” and “binary” and lacked sufficient context “for exactly how challenging” the goal was.
Adopting his own “smash the gangs” slogan, Starmer pledged to tackle the problem by dismantling the people smuggling networks running the crossings but has so far had no more success than his predecessor.
Reform has led Starmer’s Labour Party by double-digit margins in opinion polls for most of 2025.
In a New Year message, Farage predicted that if Reform got things “right” at the forthcoming local elections “we will go on and win the general election” due in 2029 at the latest.
Without addressing the migrant issue directly, he added: “We will then absolutely have a chance of fundamentally changing the whole system of government in Britain.”
In his own New Year message, Starmer insisted his government would “defeat the decline and division offered by others.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, urged people not to let “politics of grievance tell you that we’re destined to stay the same.”
- Protests -
The small boat figures come after Home Secretary Mahmood in November said irregular migration was “tearing our country apart.”
In early December, an interior ministry spokesperson called the number of small boat crossings “shameful” and said Mahmood’s “sweeping reforms” would remove the incentives driving the arrivals.
A returns deal with France had so far resulted in 153 people being removed from the UK to France and 134 being brought to the UK from France, border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said.
“Our landmark one-in one-out scheme means we can now send those who arrive on small boats back to France,” he said.
The past year has seen multiple protests in UK towns over the housing of migrants in hotels.
Amid growing anti-immigrant sentiment, in September up to 150,000 massed in central London for one of the largest-ever far-right protests in Britain, organized by activist Tommy Robinson.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications made in the year to June 2025, according to official figures as of mid-November.
Labour is currently taking inspiration from Denmark’s coalition government — led by the center-left Social Democrats — which has implemented some of the strictest migration policies in Europe.
Senior British officials recently visited the Scandinavian country, where successful asylum claims are at a 40-year low.
But the government’s plans will likely face opposition from Labour’s more left-wing lawmakers, fearing that the party is losing voters to progressive alternatives such as the Greens.
