You simply cannot confiscate people's property.

I was standing on the pavement in Malé, watching the evening ferry unload, when the thought hit me again. They think an oath is a magic spell. That signing a paper or raising a hand somehow makes their actions righteous, even when they break the very rules they swore to protect. We, the normal people, we get angry. We might shout, we might make threats in the heat of the moment. But the state? The government? It can’t. It’s not allowed the luxury of our petty rages. There’s a line, you see. A line written in law, in principle, in the simple, quiet understanding that a society is built on trust. When the government crosses that line, it doesn’t just break a rule; it breaks the trust that holds these islands together. It becomes no different from a man on the street acting out of pure, unthinking anger. And anger is a terrible foundation for a nation. We’ve seen it before—the land given away to win votes, the flats meant for the needy subleased for profit by someone living comfortably abroad. It all starts with that same thinking: the rules are for other people. They talk about following the rules to the letter. But the letter of the law is cold and precise; it doesn’t bend for oaths or for political convenience. You can’t confiscate what isn’t yours to take, no matter how grand the ceremony or how solemn the promise. That’s the contract. The sea doesn’t care about your oath; it follows its own tides. The monsoon comes and goes by its own rules. We live by that rhythm, and we expect our leaders to live by the rhythm of the law. And yet, there’s a weariness in the air, a kind of ironic acceptance. We laugh about it sometimes, the sheer audacity. We have to, or we’d go mad. We see the nepotism, the bloated ministries, the houses promised and never delivered, and we shake our heads with a dry, knowing smile. This is our reality. But deep down, beneath the irony, there’s a quiet, stubborn hope. A belief that the tide will eventually turn, that the rules will matter again, not just as words on a page, but as the bedrock of our daily lives. Because without that, what are we? Just a collection of angry individuals, and the sea is rough enough as it is.