Yameen initially said he accepted defeat, and was ready to step down when his term ends on November 17. But last week he launched the Supreme Court challenge seeking a fresh vote.
At a hearing on Sunday, which resumed on Monday, Yameen’s lawyer Mohamed Saleem accused the printer of coating ballot papers with an unnamed substance to make votes marked in Yameen’s box vanish.
Saleem said a “special pen with disappearing ink” was also given to people who were going to vote for his client, a reporter at the hearing said. Counting officials also allegedly carried secret pens with which they marked ballots for the opposition.
A lawyer for the IEC denied any wrongdoing, including using any special ink. Yameen had also accused the IEC of colluding with the printer of the ballots.
Ahead of the court hearing in the capital Male, the United States warned “appropriate measures” would be taken if the will of the Maldivian people was undermined. Europe and India have issued similar warnings in the past.
The US and its allies have been concerned by growing Chinese influence in the strategically positioned Indian Ocean archipelago, especially under Yameen’s authoritarian rule.
Yameen’s Progressive Party (PPM) on Saturday said the vote was the “most farcical election in living memory” with the organisation “abysmal” and vote-rigging “rampant”.