Local media outlet Channel News Maldives (CNM) has published a leaked photograph circulating on social media apparently showing Deputy Minister of Transport Ibrahim Nazim in a casino.
The report claimed that the photograph was taken in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The television behind the individual alleged to be Nazim in its bottom corner says “Welcome to Bellagio”, a Colombo casino.
CNM also reported that police were currently verifying the matter.
However, a police spokesperson disputed the claim stating that police had not formally “received any reports regarding such a case”. He also refused to comment on CNM’s allegation that police were trying to verify the authenticity of the photograph.
MvYouth, an online newspaper affiliated with the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) – Nazim’s former party prior to his defection to Gasim Ibrahim’s Jumhoree Party – reported that the photograph had been taken while Nazim was on a campaign trip to Colombo with the JP.
Nazim was considered a senior PPM activist who backed the party’s ousted Deputy Leader Umar Naseer during the party’s presidential primaries, but subsequently gave his full support to Abdulla Yameen after he defeated Naseer in the election.
Following Umar Naseer’s announcement of his support for Gasim, Nazim resigned from his position as PPM’s Youth Wing leader and signed up with the JP, backing Gasim’s candidacy.
The photograph was leaked less than a week after the JP launched its “Religion and Nationalism Policy”, pledging that a future government under Gasim Ibrahim would strengthen Islamic faith and nationalism, particularly among young people.
Minivan News was unable to get a comment from Nazim as his phone was switched off at time of press.
The Jumhoree Party has meanwhile dismissed the leaked photograph as a “fake” claiming that it was PPM “propaganda”.
Speaking to Minivan News, JP Spokesperson Moosa Rameez claimed that “in this technological world, editing a photo is very simple.”
“You will have seen a man wearing his underwear outside flying on TV who is called Superman. You will have seen a man releasing web from his wrists called Spiderman. See all these are made and they are videos. We are talking about a still photograph here. How simple would it be to edit one?” Rameez told Minivan News.
Rameez said he believed the PPM was behind the whole scandal and was attempting to take revenge after Nazim left the party to support the Jumhoree Alliance.
“When a man’s wife whom he loves gets a divorce and leaves him, he will start talking thinks bad about her. Likewise, that young boy Jameel (PPM presidential candidate Yameen’s running mate, Dr Mohamed Jameel) cannot digest the decision. Why else would they try to defame someone who worked with them before?” he said.
Rameez alleged the PPM had become “desperate” after realising that Gasim and former President Nasheed were the only two candidates who had any chance of winning the upcoming elections.
“I am sure Yameen and Jameel are behind this. This is part of their propaganda,” he alleged.
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Hypocrites!
Gambling is a lot less than interest.
interests, including banks savings interest is equivalent to having aex with parents. Quotes Imam Imran.
We have bank interests for all our accounts in Mordis.
So, Gambling cannot be worse.
Normal day in a very average Mordisian life.
“You will have seen a man wearing his underwear outside flying on TV who is called Superman."
Well, well, funny you should mention that. We also saw a man wearing his underwear (outside) underneath his huge ugly protruding belly, and slapping the elastic of the said underwear on his manhood, in front a prostitute only clad in her underwear.
He definitely wasn't Superman, but a local porn star named Ali Hameed, who apparently has a part time job at the Supreme Court of the Maldives.
JP is also in denial regarding that video. Gasim is literally getting his dirty underwear all over the face of the voting public.
Who gives a sh*t really? Especially on Minivan this just is preaching to the choir.
The "Gaumattaka Dheenataka" sheeple are indoctrinated to believe what they are told, not what they see, hear or what makes sense.
If their Overlord had a foot up their arse, they would turnaround and say, "Damn you KeneryGey Nasheed, you cant discredit my benevolent master by taking on his likeness!"
Is he hurting anyone?
Thease are no fakes. But if one has freedoms why not freedom for gambling too. Just let him loose his illegal earnings the way he deserves to lose it and let Mr Gasim pump more cash into those who are willing to sell their loyalties and later he shall realize what a fool he has been due to his total blindness and belief that he has the ability to buy all the maldivians.
I have mentioned this before, but it's a well known fact that Maldivians go abroad to have sex with prostitutes, drink, gamble and do pretty much everything they can't do back home. Hell, I have met a couple of Maldivians at nightclubs and it didn't surprise me a bit.
Is Minivan affiliated with MDP?
@Wives and Concubines on Mon, 12th Aug 2013 2:07 PM
"Hell, I have met a couple of Maldivians at nightclubs and it didn’t surprise me a bit."
Yes, there are plenty of hypocrites. A wealthy young Saudi man was interviewed inside a famous night club in a Western capital once. He was asked why he was drinking just red bull.
His reply: "My religion doesn't allow me to drink alcohol". There was a scantily clad woman with her arms all over him whilst he uttered this horse s**t!
The hypocrisy of Dhivehistanis knows no bounds. Perfectly normal when they follow a religion which controls every little thing they do: from how to put on slippers to what prayers to say when having sexual intercourse. Like the Saudi elite, the Dhivehistani elite refuses to follow these rules while imposing it on the peasantry. But now with digital media and the internet, the elite are finding it hard to conceal their hypocrisy. In the 80s they could drink, gamble and dance in the privacy of clubs and resorts. Not so now. Too bad. The peasant's ignorance will not last long.
Is going to a casino a hanging offence in Maldives?.....I am aware that you have some of the stupidest laws in South Asia.
Ibrahim Nazim is welcome to gamble in the offshore casinos of Goa and drink himself senseless on the cheap tax free booze available everywhere.
I guess anybody who lives in an mind bogglingly boring, ultra conservative, drug addicted 100% muslim country like the Maldives needs a break...........
This generous invitation to visit my country is NOT EXTENDED to the rest of you dim people.....stay put on your primitive atolls.
Miss india. You disappoint me! You are so parochial. I have never visited India, but I would like to. Despite all the bad press your country gets about its treatment of women, mind boggling poverty and sectarian conflict, I still admire the way your country has managed to produce amazing humanitarians, authors and poets.Maldives is a bit like that too, we too are a mixture of good and bad.
Have you heard the quote which goes something like, "Your mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open"? Has yours ever been open towards other cultures?
Then again, are you a Maldivian, hiding behind a convenient alias so that you can pour all your discontent into social media? Relax a bit!
I think a few have missed the point of this criticism.
The commentors here that are critical of Nazim gambling are not against somebody having a bet. It is the hypocrisy that is being crititised here, the inequality before the law which this demonstrates.
Like @homosexual said: "The Dhivehistani elite refuses to follow these rules while imposing it on the peasantry..."
The point that I have been trying to make is not just the inequality before the law and the hypocrisy. That is obvious. I have been trying to stress something much more than that. I am trying to stress the fact that the elite can live WAY WAY above the law BECAUSE of the Religious nature of the Law.
The Religious Law keeps everybody in a state of fear because it threatens unjustly harsh punishments for moral failures which we are ALL guilty of - and uses the threat of eternal hell fire as well. The anxiety, the fear, that this creates amongst the peasentry renders them feeling incapable of standing up against the inequality, the injustice, they submit to it, and are told - it is ALLAH"S WILL as everything is ALLAH"S WILL. Therefore, the law renders the peasents passive, quite, non-resistant, and feeling unable to stand up against injustice because - after all, it is futile to resist ALLAH"S WILL, and, a sin to do so. So, thanks to this LAW, the elite are above the sense of "democratic accountability" which often works to reign in the greed, the hedonistic excess, the tyranny of the elite.
Many religious beliefs, such as the fear of eternal hell, the belief in imposing religion via the state, unjustly harsh punishments, belief that it is a sin to resist a ruler, and other beliefs, make it IMPOSSIBLE for JUSTICE to exist in a state.
It is clear that such beliefs are the products of the will to power of the elite, NOT the desire for Justice of the oppressed.
A Just God would never make anybody burn in hell for a thousand years for 60 years worth of crime, or sin, that is grotesque, makes God look a million times worse than the most evil dictator that ever lived.