"Dear all, 1st round of the Presidential elections to be held on Nov 9th and 2nd round on Nov 16th," the independent Elections Commission chief Fuwad Thowfeek said on Twitter.[break]
The Maldivian constitution requires that a president be inaugurated by November 11, but Thowfeek did not say what would happen if no candidate gets the required 50 percent to secure an outright win in the first round.
That would leave the Maldives without a leader for five days until the completion of the second round runoff.
Maldives police on Saturday halted an election that opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed was expected to win.
Police blocked the vote saying it was illegal for the election to go ahead without all three candidates approving the names of all voters as required by the Supreme Court.
Only Nasheed had signed off the electoral lists by Friday evening.
An earlier round won by Nasheed on September 7 was annulled by the Supreme Court which held that there were irregularities although international observers gave it a clean chit.
Asian and Western diplomats have warned that the Maldives could be heading for a constitutional crisis and a power vacuum if a president is not elected before November 11.
The UN and the European Union have joined an international chorus opposing the cancellation of elections on Saturday.
European Union´s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in a statement warned that failure to hold credible elections will damage Male´s relations with international partners.
"Further instability would also damage the country´s economy and its relations with its international partners," she warned.
However, outgoing President Mohamed Waheed sounded defiant in his first address to reporters after Saturday´s election fiasco and defended the decision to abort the election.
He said an election where only one out of three candidates had approved the voter lists could have led to unrest and bloodshed in the nation of 350,000 Sunni Muslims.
"An election by force will only cause bloodshed. I will not allow that," he told reporters. "No matter what the international community says, and no matter what political parties say, my utmost responsibility today is Maldivian citizen´s security.
"People of our country are not any less capable or less educated than those in other countries, even the Western countries. They cannot come and tell us what to do."
Nasheed, 46, accuses his erstwhile deputy Waheed of being a puppet of the former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Waheed, who was Nasheed´s deputy took over the country´s leadership after he stepped down following a police mutiny in February last year.
Nasheed has repeatedly called on Waheed to resign and let the speaker of parliament conduct a fresh presidential vote.
Observers say there should no surprise at the turmoil as key institutions are still run by followers of former president Gayoom who never accepted Nasheed´s 2008 victory.
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