MALE, (PNA/Xinhua) — Maldives police defended their move to stop presidential elections that were supposed to take place here on Saturday, insisting that a vote would have been “unlawful” and could have sparked “national instability.”
Maldives police spokesman and Superintendent of Police Abdulla Nawaz told reporters that support could not have been given to an election that did not meet a 16-point guideline set by the Supreme Court ahead of the polls.
He insisted that article five of the Supreme Court guideline, which says candidates have to sign off on an all-important electoral list, was clearly not met after tycoon Gasim Ibrahim and former President Gayoom’s half-brother MP Abdulla Yamin refused to abide by it.
Only former President Mohammad Nasheed who won the previous round of polling on Sept. 7 accepted the list citing errors as “negligible.”
The first round of vote was annulled by the Supreme Court earlier this month and the guideline was set in place for the second round of voting. However the Elections Commission was only given 12 days to organize voting across 200 islands.