The Maldives government on Tuesday defended the arrest of former president Mohamed Nasheed.
Voting was held in Maldives on Saturday for the second multi-party presidential elections with long queues of people outside polling stations in this Indian Ocean archipelago, which has seen a series of unsettling political events in the last eighteen months.
Democracy in Maldives is at the crossroads. There is need for the international community to put pressure on the incumbent regime in the country, so that it is not able to disrupt elections once again, and the democracy in Maldives could be saved from sinking, says Anand Kumar.
India on Saturday voiced "deep concern" over the developments in the Maldives, a day after former president Mohamed Nasheed was sentenced to 13-year imprisonment by a criminal court of that country under anti-terror laws.
'Agreements signed between the Maldives and China have seriously worried India.'
Mohammed Nasheed, sentenced to 13 years in jail under anti-terrorism laws, will have a furnished air-conditioned prison.
Maldives Supreme Court has ordered the suspension of the run-off presidential re-vote scheduled for Sunday, a day after former president Mohammed Nasheed led the first round but failed to clinch an outright majority.
Nasheed, whose Maldivian Democratic Party functions from Colombo, appealed for India's help.
China's stand is that relevant parties should find a solution internally.
The United States on Thursday voiced concern over "disorderly" protests in Maldives, where supporters of ousted President Mohammed Nasheed disrupted the opening session of parliament, and asked all parties to work peacefully to find a solution to the political crisis under an India-brokered deal.
Nearly two months after he was ousted as Maldives' president, Mohamed Nasheed has said he will visit India next month to seek support for his efforts to hold early elections and restore a democratically-elected government in his country. 44-year-old Nasheed, who became Maldives' first democratically-elected president following multi-party polls in October 2008, had resigned on February 7 in what he claims was a coup.
Maldivian Vice President Ahmed Adeeb was on Thursday impeached by the Parliament overwhelmingly over an alleged attempt to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen and faces terrorism charges as lawmakers approved state of emergency in the island that has sparked concerns globally.
Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) candidate Mohamed Muizzu, won the Maldivian presidential elections on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported citing local media.
Sharif was the only prime minister from India's neighbourhood who wasn't invited to the swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi.
President Yameen declared the emergency on February 5 after the Supreme Court ordered the release of a group of opposition leaders, who had been convicted in widely criticised trials. Among them was exiled ex-President Mohamed Nasheed. The court said his 2015 trial had been unconstitutional.
In a major development, former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed was on Friday night sentenced to 13-year imprisonment by a criminal court in Male under the anti-terrorism laws.
For India to view the new Sri Lankan leadership only through the prism of the past or through their narrow view on China, is fraught with possibilities that should be avoided, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay and Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth are set to be invited to Modi's swearing-in ceremony.
'Will President Dissanayake calibrate his foreign policy taking into account India's immediate security concerns? We need to watch.'
Maldivian President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has asked the international community to respect the ruling on Nasheed.
Hundreds of supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Nasheed gathered outside the Majlis for a second time in the day on Sunday raising slogans against the current regime of Mohammed Waheed Hassan.
George Joseph
A multi-layer security arrangement involving five companies of paramilitary personnel, NSG commandoes and snipers have already been deployed around the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Drone cameras have also been put into service.
India has proposed early presidential elections in Maldives to end the political impasse in the country following the ouster of the first democratically elected President Mohamed Nasheed.
Maldives on Tuesday voiced its 'hurt' at Prime Minister Modi not visiting it
As the international community focuses its attention on the presidential elections, front runners Nasheed and Abdullah Yameen have warned of poll time violence, reports Shubha Singh
In a significant decision, which may escalate the political turmoil in Maldives, the country's supreme court on Tuesday declared as null and void the first round of presidential polls in which former president Mohammed Nasheed emerged as the winner.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
Dejected by the cold shoulder given by India, ousted Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed said on Tuesday that New Delhi has taken his party "for granted" and may lose "leverage" to China under the new regime.
Maldives' former president Mohamed Nasheed wants a foreign body to probe the circumstances of the coup that ousted him in February and plunged the country into a political crisis. Nasheed told a news conference that his Maldivian Democratic Party is considering requesting a "foreign organisation" to look into the incidents of February 7 impartially. He did not elaborate over which foreign body his party wanted to approach.
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
'The 2017 Doklam stand-off in Bhutan, the 2018 Maldives crisis, and the 2020 Nepal Kalapani border dispute shows how Beijing has shot off these countries' shoulders to target India.'
A delegation of the Progressive Party of Maldives led by its presidential candidate, Abdulla Yamin Abdul Gayoom called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday.
Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom was today sworn in as the 6th President of the Maldives, ending nearly two years of political turmoil that threatened to isolate the country internationally.
While the US omitted China and Russia from the list of invitees, Beijing was furious over the invitation to the self-governing island Taiwan, which China said is a blatant violation of the 'One China' policy that considers Taipei as the integral part of the Chinese mainland.
'As of now, it may be best for India to insist that Yameen honours the supreme court rulings and ensures that the next election is free and fair,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Whether it is Sri Lanka, Maldives, or Nepal, quietly but steadily, India has been reclaiming some of the ground it had lost to China, observes Aditi Phadnis.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Sri Lanka's Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday imposed emergency giving him sweeping powers ahead of the key election on July 20 to pick a new President as he urged the political parties to put aside differences and form an all-party government, with the Opposition dubbing his decision as an 'undemocratic draconian act'.
The fresh batch of diplomats also includes EU representatives, and their participation assumes significance as the EU Parliament recently initiated to bring a joint draft resolution on the Citizenship Amendment Act and Kashmir, the vote on which was later deferred.
