The politics of the Maldives, as per the reports, take place in the framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President is the Head of Government. Executive power is exercised by the government. The President heads the executive branch and appoints the Cabinet; like many presidential democracies, each member of the cabinet need to be approved by the Parliament. The President, along with their pick for vice president, is directly elected by the denizens to a five-year term by a secret ballot. Once in office, they could be re-elected to a second 5-year term, which is the limit allowed by the Constitution. The current President of the Maldives is Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who was sworn into office on July 13, 2018, when his predecessor, Abdulla Yameen, lost the 2018 presidential election. Yameen followed his own predecessor Mohamed Nasheed's forced resignation in a coup led by the police. Nasheed reportedly resigned involuntarily to forestall an escalation of violence, and was placed in jail, before being forced into exile, from which he eventually returned.
Phillip Christopher Jupitus is an English stand-up and improv comedian, actor, performance poet, cartoonist and podcaster. Jupitus was a team captain on all but one BBC Two-broadcast episode of music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks from its inception in 1996 until 2015, and also appears regularly as a guest on several other panel shows, including QI and BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Waterstones is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
James Anthony Patrick Carr is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer, and actor. He is known for his deadpan delivery of controversial one-liners, for which he has been both praised and criticised, and his distinctive laugh. He began his comedy career in 1997, and he has regularly appeared on television as the host of Channel 4 panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
Stephen James Merchant is an English comedian, actor, director, presenter and writer.
Robert Patrick Webb is an English comedian, actor, writer, and television personality. He is one half of the double act Mitchell and Webb, alongside David Mitchell. Webb and Mitchell both starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, in which Webb plays Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne. The two also starred in the sketch comedy programme That Mitchell and Webb Look, for which they then performed a stage adaption, The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb. The duo starred in the 2007 film Magicians, and in the short-lived series Ambassadors. Webb headed the critically acclaimed sitcom The Smoking Room and was a performer in the sketch show Bruiser. Since 2017, he has starred alongside Mitchell in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back.
Mark Lynas is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He has written for the New Statesman, The Ecologist, Granta and Geographical magazines, and The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post in the United States; he also worked on and appeared in the film The Age of Stupid. He was born in Fiji, grew up in Peru, Spain and the United Kingdom and holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh. He has published several books including Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans (2011). Lynas is research and climate lead for the Alliance for Science and is co-founder of the pro-science environmental network RePlanet. Since 2009 he has been climate advisor to former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, and he currently works to assist Nasheed with the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of the world's most climate-vulnerable 58 developing countries. He has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed scientific publications, including a 2021 paper which found that the consensus on anthropogenic climate change in the scholarly literature now exceeds 99%.
Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, comedian, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
Mohamed Nasheed GCSK is a Maldivian politician and activist currently serving as the 19th speaker of the People's Majlis since May 2019. A founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party, he served as President of the Maldives from 2008 until his resignation in 2012. He is the first democratically elected president of the Maldives and the only president to resign from office.
Christopher Ryan Hardwick is an American comedian, actor, television and podcast host, writer, and producer. He hosts Talking Dead, an hourlong aftershow on AMC affiliated with the network's zombie drama series The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, as well as Talking with Chris Hardwick, a show in which Hardwick interviews prominent pop culture figures, and The Wall, a plinko-inspired gameshow on NBC, Hardwick created Nerdist Industries, operator of the Nerdist Podcast Network and home of his podcast The Nerdist Podcast, which later left the network and was renamed to ID10T with Chris Hardwick. His podcast has broadcast 1,000 episodes as of December 2019.
Andrew Zaltzman is a British comedian and author who largely deals in political and sport-related material.
Jon Joel Richardson is an English comedian. He is known for his appearances on 8 Out of 10 Cats and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and his work as co-host with Russell Howard on BBC 6 Music. He is the presenter of Jon Richardson: Ultimate Worrier, and also featured with his wife in the TV show Meet the Richardsons.
Chris Turner is a Canadian journalist and author.
Katherine Frances Brand, known as Katy Brand, is an English actress, comedian and writer, known for her ITV2 series Katy Brand's Big Ass Show and for Comedy Lab Slap on Channel 4.
An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer "What's Next?' is a 2011 non-fiction book written by London-based British author, comedian and businessman Mark Stevenson. The book was released in January of that year in the United Kingdom and in February in the United States.
James William Acaster is an English comedian. As well as the stand-up specials Repertoire and Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, he is known for co-hosting the food podcast Off Menu and the panel show Hypothetical. Acaster makes use of fictional characters within his stand-up comedy, which is characterised by frequent callback jokes, offbeat observational comedy and overarching stories. He has won four Chortle Awards, a Just for Laughs Award and International Comedy Festival Awards at Melbourne and New Zealand.
David Sean Anthony is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and podcaster. He is best known as the creator and co-host of the comedy podcast The Dollop, in which he tells notable stories from American history to his friend and fellow comedian Gareth Reynolds, who has not heard the story before. Since 2019, he has also co-hosted the podcast The West Wing Thing with writer Josh Olson.
The 2011–2012 Maldives political crisis began as a series of peaceful protests that broke out in the Maldives on 1 May 2011. They would continue, eventually escalating into the resignation of President Mohamed Nasheed in disputed circumstances in February 2012. Demonstrators were protesting what they considered the government's mismanagement of the economy and were calling for the ouster of President Nasheed. The main political opposition party in the country, the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party led by the former president of the country Maumoon Abdul Gayoom accused President Nasheed of "talking about democracy but not putting it into practice." The protests occurred during the Arab Spring.
Tiffany Stevenson is an English stand-up comedian, writer and actress.
Climate change in the Maldives is a major issue for the country. As an archipelago of low-lying islands and atolls, many parts of the Maldives are threatened by sea level rise, with some predictions suggesting most of the nation will become uninhabitable during the 21st century. The country is striving to adapt to climate change, and Maldivian authorities have been prominent in international political advocacy to implement climate change mitigation.
