3:54 AM
McGhori
MALE: Maldives President, Mohammad Waheed on Saturday categorically rejected any possibility of early polls.
Rejecting former president Mohammad Nasheed’s demands, who resigned on Tuesday in what he said was a cop, calling for early elections, Waheed said that the current situation in the island nation was not conducive to holding “free and fair elections”.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts are on to bring some resolution to the political stand-off in the country.
The US Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, meanwhile, is expected to arrive in Male on Saturday to meet President Waheed.
Nasheed rallied hundreds of people outside a mosque here in the capital, Male, in open defiance of an arrest warrant issued against him on Thursday. Later on Friday, he told reporters that the police and military were beating and arresting elected leaders and other supporters of his party and hinted that he would go to the country’s apex court against his ouster.
Posted in: INTERNATIONAL
