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| 1969, April |
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| The country was renamed Maldives. | 1 |
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| 1975, March |
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| Acting on rumors of a coup conspiracy, Pres. Nasir invoked emergency powers, dismissing and banishing the prime minister, Ahmed Zaki, and abolishing the office of prime minister. | 2 |
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| 1978 |
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| Nasir announced that his health prohibited seeking reelection. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, minister of transport in Nasir's cabinet and a former representative of Maldives to the UN, succeeded Nasir as president. Nasir left Maldives for Singapore. | 3 |
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| 1980, April |
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| Pres. Gayoom discovered an attempted coup, which implicated Nasir. | 4 |
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| 1981, April |
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| Ahmed Naseem, former deputy fisheries minister and brother-in-law of Nasir, was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting to overthrow Pres. Gayoom. Nasir denied involvement. Attempts to extradite him from Singapore were unsuccessful. | 5 |
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| 1983, Sept |
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| Gayoom was reelected as president for another five years, by a national referendum in which he obtained 95.6 percent of the vote. | 6 |
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| 1988, Sept |
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| Gayoom was again reelected unopposed, for a third five-year term, obtaining 96.4 percent of the vote. | 7 |
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| Nov |
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| Another, more serious, attempt to depose Pres. Gayoom. In hiding, Gayoom successfully appealed to the Indian government, whose troops quickly suppressed the insurrection. Mercenaries, said to be Sri Lankan members of the Tamil separatist group the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), allegedly were recruited by a disaffected Maldivian businessman, Abdullah Luthufi, acting in concert with the leader of PLOTE, Kadirkaman Uma Maheswaran. | 8 |
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