MALE, (Reuters) – The Commonwealth is sending a team to the Maldives to investigate why the first democratically elected president of the Indian Ocean nation has suddenly been replaced, the 54-nation group said yesterday.
Ex-president Mohamed Nasheed says he was ousted in a coup carried out on Tuesday in a mutiny by police and military officers on the archipelago, best known as a get-away-from-it-all beach holiday destination.
Late yesterday, Nasheed supporters gathered outside the Peoples’ Majlis, or parliament threw wads of the islands’ rufiyya currency at police – an apparent reference to unsubstantiated rumours the security forces were paid to rebel.
Riot police with shields and batons cordoned off the area and engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with around 150 demonstrators, arresting a few but striking none.
New President Mohamed Waheed Hussain Manik says his move up from vice president followed constitutional procedures after Nasheed resigned voluntarily.
Diplomats from the United States, Britain, India, United Nations and Commonwealth are in the Maldives pressing for an independent inquiry after Nasheed quit on Tuesday and rallied supporters the following day for protests that ended in violence.
Aside from Sunday’s non-violent protest, tempers appeared to have cooled in Male, the capital of the 1,200-island nation.
The Commonwealth yesterday held urgent talks among its nine-nation Ministerial Action Group, which resolved to send “a ministerial mission which will visit Maldives urgently to ascertain the facts surrounding the transfer of power, and to promote adherence to Commonwealth values and principles,” according to a statement issued in London.
Three or four foreign ministers should visit this month, and possibly as early as next weekend, Surujrattan Rambachan, the foreign affairs minister of Trinidad and Tobago, told Reuters.
“We have to collect all the facts relevant to the situation by speaking to as many people as possible and ensuring that the position of the people of the Maldives is well-understood,” he said by telephone. The group will meet again in London next week, he said.
The group did not discuss any possible sanctions against the Maldives, although it has the authority to sanction to suspend and even expel Common-wealth members.
OLD GUARD CABINET
New President Waheed named ministers yesterday who are almost all veterans of the government of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives for 30 years until Nasheed beat him in a 2008 election.