Male’, Maldives – Speaker of the Parliament, Mohamed Nasheed has expressed severe dissatisfaction regarding the performance of Fisheries Minister Zaha, and has signaled that he might be moving to remove her from office.
Speaking in the parliamentary sittings on Wednesday, Nasheed highlighted that Minister Zaha was violated the law, signaling to the Parliament Members that she should be removed.
“So, what I have to say to the honorable members is that when a minister fails to carry out their duties, the members will know what to do next.” He said.
Nasheed’s dissatisfaction with Zaha’s performance was followed by her failure to formulate regulations with regards to the Fisheries Act, within the allocated period of time. According to the amendments brought to the Act on September 16th of 2019, the regulations should have been formulated within six months of the enactment of the amendments.
Nasheed went on to say that, due to this, the committee has decided that Zaha has violated the law. He also added that Zaha has sent a letter to the parliament, upon the initiation of discussions based on the decision of the Secondary Legislation Committee. In the letter, Zaha explained that the regulations have been formulated and have been sent to the Attorney General’s Office, Nasheed said. However, he insisted that the bottom line is that the regulations have not been gazetted.
Further, Nasheed said that even if the Committee on Member’s Privileges and Ethics were to review the performance of Zaha, it would deem that Zaha Has failed to carry out her responsibilities.
With this, it appears that the next step of the Parliament would be to carry out a no confidence vote against Zaha – something which is likely to pass as MDP holds the super majority of the Parliament.
While this is so, this is not the first time Nasheed has criticized Zaha, who is in the cabinet on an MRM slot. Previously, Nasheed expressed dissatisfaction with Zaha’s responses to the questions of MPs. Several MPs of MDP have previously discussed a no confidence vote against her as well.
