When shit hits the fan, it will be 'why doesn't the govt do anything about this'.

You stand on the ferry deck, watching plastic wrappers drift on the turquoise. Everyone knows it’s harmful. Everyone sees it. But no one moves. The water doesn’t choke today; the fish still shimmer. So we look away. It’s the Maldivian way — if it’s not immediate, it’s meh. We’ve mastered the art of delayed concern. We apply this to everything. The political promises that evaporate by monsoon. The jobs that never come. The flats promised to young couples, now subleased by someone in Malaysia. We know it’s wrong. We feel the slow rot — in our wallets, in our hopes. But the sea is still beautiful, the breeze still salty-sweet. We tell ourselves, maybe tomorrow. Maybe someone else will care. And then the voices start. The youth advocates on social media, so full of fire. But we’ve seen this before. It’s just another game of narratives. They aren’t here for us; they’re here for the spotlight. We don’t trust them. We don’t trust the police. We don’t trust the party loyalists shouting on TV. Everyone is playing a role, and we’re the audience, tired, clapping on cue. So we wait. We wait for the medicine shortages to become emergencies. We wait for the foreign debt to snap. We wait for the harbor to clog with more imported worries. And when it all finally collapses, that’s when we’ll ask — why didn’t the government do anything? Why didn’t anyone do anything? As if we hadn’t spent years watching, knowing, looking away. Maybe that’s the real corruption — not in the courtrooms or the ministries, but in our own quiet acceptance. We see the harm, but we don’t feel it in our bones until it’s too late. By then, the narrative has already been written, and we’re just characters in someone else’s story.