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26 atolls


February 18, 2009 | permalink |



For today's Geo Quiz we invited you to a tropical paradise.

"Everybody needs...the sunny side of life."

Yep - the Maldives - the sunny side of life. Especially sunny if you're the President.

A man named Maumoon Abdul Gayoom held that job for 30 years. During that time, he enjoyed the finer things in life. The former President had his own island retreat.

He used a gold-plated desk. And then there was that 7-and-a-half million dollar yacht.

Well, Mister Gayoom was voted out of office last October.

The new President is a former political prisoner named Mohamed Nasheed.

And President Nasheed has been getting rid of his predecessor's bling.

"When we started the presidency the administration was costing more than 150 million dollars. now this is something that we just simply can't afford so we've brought it down to 4 million dollars. I don't feel a cut and we could use the rest of the money for old age pensioners for schools for housing and very many things that we need now."

One of the things they DON'T need now - that Presidential yacht.

There are plans to auction it off -- possibly on eBay.




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