A confidential letter sent by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to the Mauritius Prime Minister over a maritime boundary dispute has been leaked on social media.
President's Office spokesman Miuvaan Mohamed confirmed to Adhadhu that the letter circulating on social media is authentic. The leak of such a state secret will be investigated, he added.
In the leaked letter, President Solih stated that he would maintain the country's longstanding stance on the border issue. The Maldives stand has not changed, he wrote.
The Maldives' stand or responses to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) would not change, the president said in the letter sent on August 22, 2022.
The letter could not have caused the loss of Maldivian territory or adversely affected the ITLOS judgment, the Bar Council's law reform and research committee said last week.
The President's Office shared the letter with the Bar Council upon request for its study on the border issue.
"The letter was in the file brought by the subcommittee to study the issue. We checked whether the copy matched the original letter. We were shown the original letter as well [by the President's Office]. There was nothing in it that could have affected the case. And there was nothing that could have caused the loss of Maldivian territorial independence," Bar Council President Ismail Wisham said, citing the law reform and research committee.
Solih's letter was leaked on social media after his defeat in the presidential election's first round on Saturday. The biggest challenge faced in the campaign was the failure to respond to lies spread by the opposition, Solih said after the vote, promising full disclosures and more effort to convince voters.
The reversal
According to the letter, the Maldives stand was changed on Mauritius's disputed sovereignty over Chagos. The Maldives previously opposed Mauritius's efforts to gain sovereignty over the Chagos islands and voted against a UN General Assembly resolution to the effect in 2019.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution with 116 countries voting in favor of determining Chagos to be Mauritius territory. Along with Britain, the Maldives, America, Australia, Hungary and Israel voted against the resolution and 56 countries abstained.
As some countries expressed displeasure over how the Maldives voted, the opposition Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) at the time released a statement condemning the move. The PPM statement on May 24, 2019, said the vote defied the main international court and the rights of the Mauritius people. The statement expressed concern over how the Maldives voted and condemned the decision.
The PPM statement called on the government to apologize and to clearly explain the matter to the public.
But when the government changed its stand, the opposition PPM criticized the decision again and carried out several activities. The maritime dispute became one of the key issues where the government faced the most criticism.
