Maldives opposition urges tourist boycott after vote halted

The Maldivian opposition appealed to foreign holidaymakers today to boycott the upmarket tourist destination as authorities indefinitely postponed a presidential runoff amid mounting international concern.
The runoff had been slated for today between human rights activist Mohamed Nasheed and Abdulla Yameen, a half-brother of former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives with an iron fist for three decades before the first elections in 2008.
"It's mainly the tourism profits that go to finance the suppression of democracy in the Maldives," main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) spokesman Hamed Abdul Ghafoor told AFP.
"This is why we appeal to other countries to slap a tourism ban on the Maldives," Ghafoor said as the party extended its protests to resorts in the secluded coral islands with pristine beaches.

Nasheed is the candidate of the MDP and was forced to quit as president 20 months ago in what his supporters described as a coup.
The Supreme Court called off the runoff amid allegations of irregularities in the first round in which Nasheed narrowly missed garnering 50 per cent of the ballots needed to claim outright victory.

Tourism is a key source of revenue for the Maldives, a nation of 350,000 Sunni Muslims, which attracted over a million tourists last year.
Dozens of Maldivian resort workers today carried placards denouncing the Supreme Court move to suspend today's vote pending the investigation into a complaint of malpractice in the first round three weeks ago.

"The management allowed workers to freely express their feelings, but there has been no disruption to work," an official at the upmarket Anantara resort told AFP by telephone.
Another hotel manager who declined to be named said some local employees staged brief protests at resorts, but regular services were not interrupted.
Some of the hotel employees displayed white underpants in public to taunt Supreme Court Judge Ali Hameed who was allegedly filmed during a sex romp in a video that has gone viral.