Ahmed Nihan, the parliamentary group leader of ruling party PPM, has said that there is no point of rule of law in the Maldives if former President Mohamed Nasheed is allowed to run in the 2018 presidential election.

The United Nation (UN) Human Rights Committee has demanded that Nasheed, who is in self-exile after fleeing a 13-year prison sentence, be allowed to participate in the election.

Nihan in a twitter post said that there should be no reason to abide by foreign pressure regarding the issue.

In a report released on Monday, the UN human rights body stated that it found the judicial proceedings in former President Mohamed Nasheed’s conviction ‘contained serious flaws’, and called on the Maldives to restore his right to stand for office.

In a press release later that day, the Maldives government rejected the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee’s conclusion, stating that “is committed to promoting and protecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Maldives and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as per it’s international obligations, and it wholeheartedly refutes that any of these rights have been violated in the case of the former President Nasheed.”