MALE: The Maldives Tuesday faced the prospect of a constitutional crisis after one of the main political parties warned it may not support plans to restage aborted elections next month.

Following an international backlash over the last-minute cancelation of an election scheduled for last weekend, the Elections Commission announced late Monday that a new poll would be held on November 9.

Commission chairman Fuwad Thowfeek also said in a post on Twitter that a run-off would take place on November 16 if no candidate won more then 50 percent of the votes. However the constitution requires that a new president be in place by November 11, fueling concerns about a constitutional crisis.

Although supporters of the frontrunner and opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed welcomed the announcement of a new poll, a key ally of his rival Abdullah Yameen branded the commission as “arrogant.”

Youth Minister Mohamed Shareef also said the commission had failed to address doubts about the electoral roll that helped scupper the weekend vote.

“We are certainly heading for a constitutional crisis. I don’t know what will happen at that stage,” said Shareef, a senior member of Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives.

“From day one, we have supported the election, but the problem is the question of transparency,” Shareef said.

In particular, Shareef said he was worried about the security of the computer system, which had compiled the list of around 240,000 voters who should determine the fate of a country best known as a honeymoon destination.





“We have to be assured about security of the server. If someone manipulates a few thousand votes, it can have a big impact in a small country like ours,” he said.

“If the Elections Commission wants to, these issues can be sorted out in a couple of days. But they are arrogant. If the guidelines of the Supreme Court are not honored, we can’t support the election.” Yameen, the half-brother of the Maldives’ long-time leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, was a distant second to Nasheed in a first round of voting held across the Indian Ocean archipelago on September 7.

But the Supreme Court annulled that result earlier this month following allegations of irregularities in the voter lists, even though foreign monitors gave the polls their approval.

The court stipulated that all candidates must approve the voter lists, effectively giving Nasheed’s challengers carte blanche to block a future vote which they were sure to lose.

When neither Yameen nor the third candidate refused to endorse the voter roll, police declared last weekend’s vote illegal despite the protests of the Elections Commission.

Nasheed, a former political prisoner, said outgoing President Mohamed Waheed should step down but he doubted authorities would allow a fair election to take place.

“I don’t think there is going to be an election any time soon,” Nasheed told Britain’s The Independent newspaper, from Male.

“They have had the election and they have had the result, and we won. They came to power in a coup and they will not leave.” Nasheed has been attempting a comeback after winning the islands’ first democratic elections in 2008, only to be toppled last year following a police mutiny which he describes as a coup.

Key institutions, such as the police and judiciary, are still run by followers of Gayoom who had ruled with an iron fist for three decades.

Nasheed, 46, has accused Waheed of being a puppet of Gayoom.

The United Nations and the European Union joined widespread condemnation of the decision to cancel Saturday’s vote.

The EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in a statement warned that failure to hold credible elections would damage Male’s relations with international partners.

Australia’s High Commission in Colombo said “it is imperative that the elections now be held as scheduled with no further delays.”

However, Waheed defended the decision to abort the poll.

He said an election where only one out of three candidates had approved the voter lists could have led to unrest and bloodshed in the nation of 350,000 Sunni Muslims.

“An election by force will only cause bloodshed. I will not allow that,” he told reporters.

“No matter what the international community says, and no matter what political parties say, my utmost responsibility today is Maldivian citizens’ security.