President: Amal Clooney paints the Maldives as a banana republic

President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom has said that the Ex-President Mohamed Nasheed lawyer Amal Clooney describes the Maldives as a “Banana Republic.”

In an article President Yameen wrote on the Washington Times, the President said that the former President is on a media campaign “spearheaded” by Amal Clooney when was allowed to leave for the UK on a medical leave.

The President implied that Ex-President Nasheed’s media campaign in London is “carefully scripted and tightly controlled.”

“Mrs. Clooney’s bellicose calls for sanctions also reflect a disconnect from reality. She paints the Maldives as a banana republic. Sanctions, she says, are not there to punish the Maldivian people. Yet it was the people of our islands that voted for its current leaders in an internationally recognized election. The threats are a grave affront to our young democracy and treat our voters with disdain.” President Yameen said on his article.

President Yameen said that a member of the Maldivian embassy was barred from attending Nasheed’s press conference in London. And said that the live feed was cut as the journalists in attendance began asking questions since Nasheed had difficult questions to answer.

“With paparazzi camped outside his lawyer’s office, journalists at his London press conference failed to ask him once about how or why he had to resign as president, perhaps hypnotized by the Hollywood PR sheen. In fact, Mr. Nasheed’s election loss was recognized as fair by the EU and other international organizations. A Commonwealth investigation concluded he resigned voluntarily in 2012. The British government also backed this finding.” The article on Washington Times said.

“Bizarrely, he was never even queried about the act that triggered his arrest — despite a confession that he did abuse his executive powers in a BBC interview in 2012, in an op-ed in The New York Times the same year.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/9/abdulla-yameen-abdul-gayoom-duplicitous-attacks-on/