As much as I hate ibu, his handling of the pandemic has to be appreciated

It’s a strange feeling, admitting something good about someone you don’t trust. The mind fights it. You build walls against a person, a party, a whole way of doing things, and then reality comes and chips away at the mortar. The pandemic. I remember the fear, thick as the humid air in our narrow Malé streets. We were packed in, a city breathing on top of itself. It felt like a death sentence waiting to happen. And then, the lockdowns. The ferry horns went quiet. The usual chaos of the harbor stilled. For the first time, you could hear the sea again over the scooters. It was terrifying, but there was a system. Food distribution, testing, those strict curfews. I hated the confinement, the loss of my small job, the worry for my family on the outer islands. But I can’t deny it – the virus didn’t sweep through us like a wildfire. The capital, this dense knot of people, held. It’s a complicated truth to hold. That’s the knot we live with here. Our loyalties and our realities are often at war. We can despise the politics, the deals made in backrooms, the feeling that some are getting rich while we just get by. But we also have eyes. We saw what worked. To say it out loud feels like a betrayal of your own side, but to ignore it feels dishonest. Maybe this is what growing up is, for a nation. Learning to hold two conflicting truths at once: that a leader can be flawed, even corrupt in your eyes, and still have done a necessary thing in a moment of absolute crisis. The sea was rough, and the ship, for a time, was steadied. We are still here to argue about it.