Maldives Cabinet meets inside the sea --Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Maldives Cabinet meets inside the sea

-Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Badly threatened by the casual attitude displayed by world powers in containing the terrific climate change issue, the Maldives government has decided to draw the attention of the world leaders who play hide and seek games on impending climatic disorder that would dissolve many island nations, including Maldives, by holing a cabinet meeting for the first time in human history in underwaters.

The government has arranged a horse-shoe shaped table at the bottom of the sea for the ministers to hold the cabinet meeting on 17 October during which they will communicate using white boards and hand signals. Cabinet ministers in full scuba gear in the Maldives dived in their final rehearsals Friday ahead of an underwater cabinet meeting this weekend aimed at drawing attention to the dangers of global warming for the island nation. Coordinator of the event Shauna said the ministers dived six metres (20 feet) for the dress rehearsal near the Girifushi Island, 25 minutes by speed boat from the capital island Male. She said the ministers would sign their wet suits which would then be auctioned on the protectmaldives.com website to raise money to protect coral reefs in the archipelago.

The Maldivian archipelago, located south west of Sri Lanka, is on the front line of climate change and has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels. In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 23 inches) by 2100 would be enough to make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable. More than 80 percent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered about 850 kilometres (530 miles) across the equator, is less than one metre above mean sea level.

All arrangements are now in place and the threatened state is fully prepared to have 17 October Saturday's cabinet meeting underwater. Maldivian officials said the idea to hold the attention-grabbing underwater cabinet meeting came from President Mohamed Nasheed when he was asked by a 350.org activist group to support its "environmental day" action on October 24. "The group asked if the Maldives can hold an underwater banner supporting environmental day," an official from the president's office said. "The president thought for a while and then came up with the idea to have an underwater cabinet meeting." Obviously, the Maldives is trying to showcase e their collective anger to the G20 etc that keep meeting at different venues, have sumptuous dinners, pose for fantastic group photos and give interviews to their national media to show in big pictures how important their leaders are, while leaving the climatic change unattended seriously and unresolved by the atmospheric polluter criminal states led by USA, China and India.