New Maldives - Westminster House Talks

Westminster House Talks

Shortly after the election victory, Shaheed and Saeed engineered the Westminster House process, through which they pardoned and released a number of high profile dissidents who were languishing in jail or facing politically motivated prosecutions. These were steps towards a multiparty dialogue process supervised by the British Government designed to speed up the stalled constitutional reforms. However, both Gayoom and Yameen, who feared that British mediation would mean that the Gayoom might not be able to run for a seventh term in office, derailed the process.