International News

MALI, Maldives, Oct 14, (APP/AFP) – The main Maldives opposition party accused President Abdulla Yameen of behaving like a despot Friday for quitting the Commonwealth in the face of mounting criticism over his rights record. The party of the exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed said the unilateral decision to pull out of the 53-member bloc was another example of how Yameen was turning the honeymoon islands into a diplomatic pariah. “President Yameen has made the Maldives a very isolated place,” the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said in a statement. “This is an absolute despotic move, which says much about the Yameen regime and its political posturing and disregard for international or public opinion.” The Maldives has been wrangling with the Commonwealth over its human rights record since the toppling of Nasheed, the Indian Ocean archipelago’s first democratically-elected leader, in February 2012.