Maldives' Crisis: Waheed works for 'Unity' govt, Nasheed disappointed with India

NEW DELHI: Maldives' new president Mohamed Waheed Hassan on Sunday inducted an aide of former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, while expanding his cabinet as head of a 'unity government' with members from different political parties. Waheed left key portfolios like foreign affairs and finance vacant for deposed president Mohammed Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party.

However, Nasheed refused to back down from his demand for fresh elections and snubbed US calls for a compromise and led yet another major rally, demanding snap polls to determine the genuine wishes of the people.

He also said that people of his country were disappointed with New Delhi's response to the coup. He told reporters that he had expected a more robust intervention from India for saving democracy in the country. There are many in the strategic community, who are of the view that New Delhi showed haste in announcing its unqualified support to Waheed Hassan.

In an interview to a private TV channel after his meeting with India's special envoy M Ganapathi, the deposed president said he hoped that there would be course-correction. "Even though in the first flush, the Indian response was misdirected, like the US, India should realign itself. It is time for mid-course correction," he said.

Former foreign minister of the Indian Ocean nation Shaheed said that the deposed president will attempt to form a national government of unity. "It was clearly a coup, and done with the complicity of Mohamed Waheed Hassan (then vice-president and now president)," Shaheed, a close aide of Nasheed and a senior member of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), told a news agency. According to the former minister, Nasheed was forced to resign and that the protests were orchestrated by sections of the army, the police and Islamists.

Ganapathy has returned to New Delhi after meeting a cross-section of political leaders, including the President and the former president to explore the possibility of a political settlement. Nasheed and his supporters have been maintaining that there should be a probe into the events that led to the February 7 coup.

They have also been demanding the removal of Waheed and early elections. Supporters of Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party and his members of Parliament have been staging public demonstrations demanding the removal of Waheed.

US assistant secretary of state Robert Blake, who was in Male, had said that Washington's effort was on bringing Nasheed's MDP into the national unity government. He had said that during his interaction with political leaders, he "encouraged them to improve the capacity of the judiciary, the police and the election commission to ensure the election can be held in an orderly and peaceful manner."