Former President Mohamed Nasheed’s name will not be in ballot for the 2018 presidential election, says Fisheries Minister Dr Mohamed Shainee.

Minister Shainee, a vocal supporter of incumbent President Abdulla Yameen, said this in a Tweet posted in Dhivehi on Monday, in response to the United Nation (UN)’s Human Rights Committee, which earlier that day called on the Maldives government to allow Nasheed to run in the election.

Minister Shainee, who is also the government’s representative in the ‘all-party’ talks with the opposition, said on Twitter that there is no legal justification in the Constitution, laws, or regulations for Nasheed’s name to be placed in the ballot.

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 it “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.”