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  Meet Mohamed Nasheed, New Look President of the sun-kissed  Republic of the Maldives.   He’s the Sarah Palin of the Indian Ocean, getting big play talking about selling his evil bad guy predecessor’s yacht on EBay.

Eventually we learned she hadn’t sold her predecessor’s jet  on EBay at all, but for a loss elsewhere. And he’s been elected since October with no action.

Nasheed defeated a not nice person,  Maumoon Gayoom, who indeed ran a repressive kleptocracy of which the boat and a presidential  island retreat were symbols. But live by the symbol, die by the symbol.

Plain spoken Mr. Nasheed has gotten a lot of mileage as well from refusing the tacky gold-inflicted presidential palace Gayoom built.

  But Nasheed has instead moved into the former Sultan’s palace, no slum.

If the Maldives ever gets around to selling the boat they may find the economic tide against them.  When Iraq finally got title to a Saddam yacht which surfaced in Europe they hauled it back to Basra for lack of a buyer.