Post coup, Maldives’ government calls Nasheed ‘traitor’, launches reprisals

The new government that has taken over in Maldives following a coup has launched political reprisals, with the state media denouncing ousted president Mohamed Nasheed as a traitor and security forces rounding up former officials and aides of his administration.

Moves by Mohammed Waheed Hassan, the newly appointed president to reappoint loyalists from the hardline 30-year regime of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, defeated by Nasheed in the country's first democratic elections in 2008, have also led to fears of a repeal of reforms and a return to autocratic rule.

Maldives' former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom yesterday hailed the island nation's new government as legitimate and denied charges of any involvement in engineering the coup.

Meanwhile, the regime change had many recalling `Operation Cactus' in November 1988 when the Indian armed forces entered the archipelago nation after the then president Maumoom Abdul Gayoom faced a coup by mercenaries of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam.

Within 12 hours of the receipt of the SOS by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, two Indian Air Force IL-76 heavy-lift aircraft flew 2,000 km non-stop from the Agra airbase with a batallion of the Indian Army's Parachute Regiment on board and landed at Male International Airport on Hulule Island.

A paradrop though originally envisaged proved to be unwarranted.