Transcripts

Ambassador Robert O. Blake’s Final Press Conference as Ambassador to Maldives

May 19, 2009
American Corner, National Library
Male’

Ambassador Blake:

Good afternoon everybody and thank you very much for coming to the American Corner here.  As many of you know, my name is Bob Blake and I’m the Ambassador here in Maldives.  The purpose of my visit here today was to come and pay my farewell calls on the President and other members of the Cabinet.  As many of you know, I have been nominated by President Obama to be Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs at the State Department.  Our process in the United States is that such nominations have to be confirmed by the United States Senate.  The United States Senate has not yet voted on my nomination, so I want to stress that I am not the Assistant Secretary.  We can talk more about that later.  I remain the Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives. 

Today I had the honor of meeting with the President, the Vice President, Foreign Minister, the Defense Minister and also met with several others as part of my round of farewell calls.  I told a lot of them that when I became Ambassador in September of 2006, I recall that there were many skeptics at that time here in Maldives that your country would be able to complete the process of constitutional reforms and that you would be able to hold free and fair elections in the timetable that your country had set for itself.  During that period after my arrival and for the next two years, my team at the American Embassy and I worked very hard with members of President Gayoom’s cabinet and also the opposition to move the constitutional reform process forward.  We were very pleased when that reform process was completed last year and when free and fair elections were held, resulting, as you all know, in the election of President Nasheed.  We felt and we said at that time that the peaceful transition of power that took place was a sign of deepening democracy in Maldives, a sign of maturing democracy.  Another sign came recently with your parliamentary elections in which for the second time a sitting government lost the elections, which again I think is a good sign of a healthy democracy, as the opposition DRP came out with a plurality of the seats in the new parliament. 

In my meetings today, I urged both the members of the new Government but also the members of the opposition parties to work together now to try to consolidate and deepen democracy.  I think one of the most important things they can do is to appoint qualified members to independent institutions such as the Elections Commission, the Bribery Commission, the Human Rights Commission and other such independent commissions, as well as to the Judiciary.  These institutions are very important mechanisms for checks and balances in any democracy and I think they would help to strengthen democracy here as well.  They do exist here, but the members have not been appointed for their full five-year terms.  I think that will be an important step for the new administration to work with the new parliament to get accomplished.

I also noted the importantce of the Government and the opposition parties working closely together to address the challenges that Maldives now faces.  I’ve heard from several people that there’s a risk of this country becoming polarized and therefore of the two sides not being able to work together.  I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, because as I said earlier, it’s important for there to be cooperation on both sides of the political aisle so that you can address the economic situation and some of the future challenges that your country faces right now.

In all of my meetings, I also talked about America’s relations with Maldives.  We agree that America’s relations are strong and we reviewed a lot of the progress that we’ve made on many fronts, including on the defense cooperation front, where, as you know, we’ve had many visits by high-level American officials, generals, and admirals working to help strengthen maritime security and port security in this country.  We look forward to continuing that very strong cooperation. 

We also talked about ways we might be able to work together on some of the other global challenges that the world faces.  One of those is climate change.  President Nasheed has stated his ambition to have Maldives become a carbon neutral country, which is certainly a very welcome and ambitious goal.  We talked about ways the United States and Maldives might work together.  I think that several of your officials will be going to the United States soon.  We will be working to set up a schedule for them with high-level government officials, but also members of our non-governmental and business communities about ways that those people might be able to work with Maldives to help you achieve your goal and help Maldives be a leader in the climate change and clean energy field.

In conclusion, I just want to say that I think Maldives has made great progress over the last several years and has really been a success story in South Asia.  The United States has been proud to play a small role in helping that to come about.  I told them that if I’m confirmed by the Senate, I will look forward to working with President Nasheed and his team to further strengthen the relations between the United States and Maldives.  I also told them that I will be sad to stop all the regular trips that I’ve been making to these beautiful islands.  I’ve made many close friends here and hope to be able to be able to come here as often as possible, but my new duties will probably carry me to many more countries.  I’ll have responsibilities for 11 countries, so I won’t be able to make as many frequent trips as before.  I also want to thank all of you, members of the press.  We’ve always had good, close relations and good dialogue and I hope that can continue as well.

Again, let me thank you for coming and I’d be glad to take any questions that you might have. 

Q. Good luck with your promotion.  I’d like to ask your thoughts on the appointment of the Presidential Commission by President Nasheed to investigation the…(inaudible)
 
Ambassador Blake:  Well I think that the work of such commissions is best handled by independent institutions like the Bribery Commission and so forth.  I’ve urged the Government to make maximum use of  independent commissions so that this is not seen as a partisan effort, because again I underline the importance of the two sides, both the Government and Opposition, working together to address some of the challenges that your country now faces.

Q.  Something related to that question.  For example our Bribery Commission…this Commission has been holding cases…(inaudible).  These cases are submitted before to the President’s Office…(inaudible).   These cases were filed over there.  Some cases are lasting more than five years.  Still we don’t know …(inaudible)…

Ambassador Blake:  Well again I think that’s really a question for your own Government and your own Parliament to discuss.  But as a general matter, let me just say, commissions that are handling independent investigations, such as anticorruption investigations, naturally such investigations have to be confidential while the investigation is going on.  But as you say, it’s important to bring such investigations to a conclusion and then to announce the results of those investigations once the investigations are complete.  But I don’t want to comment on any specific cases because I’m not familiar enough with the specifics. 

Q:  Last time we met, you spoke about helping our scholars, some collaborations.  Is there any progress on this?

Ambassador Blake:  Yes, we do have various exchange programs already underway.  We’re looking now at ways that we can do more on that.  Because, we thing that trying to strengthen educational ties between the United States and Maldives is a very important priority.  Our Public Affairs office is looking at ways to increase the amount of scholarships and increase ways for Maldivians to better take advantage of educational opportunities in the United States. 

Q:  Based on your experience, what would be your advice to the new Ambassador?

Ambassador Blake:  My advice to the new Ambassador?  We haven’t yet named a new Ambassador here, but my advice to the new Ambassador would be along the lines of what I’ve already said to you publicly.  That it’s important to work with both sides in Maldives, and it’s important to encourage both sides to work together and to avoid polarizing their efforts.  Because, if they fight among themselves and focus their energies on working against each other, they won’t be able to address some of the big challenges your country faces.  That’s really where the focus of their efforts should lie.

Q:  Sir, the whole world is in an economic crisis.  So, in your opinion how long do you think it will last?

Ambassador Blake:  From all indications, it does appear that the global downturn is going to continue through the end of this year, but I think the IMF and others have predicted that things will begin to get better in 2010.  I must say that your country has been relatively isolated from the effects of the global economic downturn.  In my talks today, I learned that, for example, your tourism sector has not suffered as much as sectors have in other countries.  I think it’s only experienced a 15-20 percent drop from what I heard from some of the hotel owners here, which is relatively good.  Many other countries have experienced much more severe economic downturns.  I think that your country has benefited from a very strong package that you have to offer---the beautiful hotels and islands that you have here.  You have a very loyal customer base which helps you a lot.  But, it’s true that nonetheless you have suffered along with everyone else.  We hope that things will get better in 2010.  It does appear that there are some early indications that things are beginning to get better in the United States.  For example, the rate of job losses has slowed down considerably in the last month or so.  That’s a positive trend that we obviously hope will continue, but it’s still too early to say whether that will continue.  As you know, President Obama has put in a very aggressive program to try to reverse the economic slide and put Americans back to work and get consumer spending and consumer credit going again so that we can get things like the housing market going, get jobs going, and the recovery can begin.  We very much hope that his program will produce those results, but it’s too early to say exactly when that might happen.

Q.  In terms of US-Maldives relations, what will be the effect under President Obama?

Ambassador Blake:  As I said earlier, I don’t expect major changes in our relations with this country.  I think we’ll continue to try to deepen our ties, work on democracy, work on things like maritime and port security, but also address some of these new global challenges.  I think one of the most important new avenues of cooperation might be in the area of climate change.  This is going to be a very high priority for our country.  The new Administration is working very cooperatively with our friends to try to reach a new climate deal to replace the Kyoto framework.  As you know, there’ll be negotiations in Copenhagen next year.  We hope to be able to coordinate with the Government of Maldives on that and also coordinate with your Government on new clean energy options that would help to reduce your own emissions and thereby contribute and also frankly be a model for other countries on how to pursue a clean energy future.  Those are some of the things that will be talking about with your ministers and also your Vice President, who is leading one of the presidential councils on this. 

Q:  inaudible

Ambassador Blake:  Nothing more than what I’ve already talked about.  Those are the main areas that we discussed. 

Q:  inaudible

Ambassador Blake:  No, we didn’t talk about medical things. 
Again, I want to thank you all for coming.  Thank you for all of your cooperation over my last years here.  I wish you all the best.  If I’m confirmed by the Senate, I look forward to coming back and working with your country to help strengthen the ties between our two countries.  Thank you again.