Male’, Maldives —The President of Elections Commission (EC), Ahmed Shareef has raised concerns over the lack of voters present at some of the polling stations for the local council elections.
EC Shareef spoke to local media outlet, ‘Avas’ and informed that voting has still not begun in some of the polling stations as no people have arrived to vote yet and has noted that so far, the amount of people appearing to vote is considerably less compared to the usual amount of people that arrive for the previous elections.
While one of the reason for the delay in voting is due to absence of people, EC Shareef informed that the delay in some stations is also due to the officials and that they are currently preparing to send backup officials for the required stations.
Other than these, EC Shareef stated that no additional issue has yet raised in the polling stations and that the Police has not yet reported any issue yet either.
According to the latest statistics revealed by the Local Council Elections, while there are a total of 713 polling stations present in the atolls and in the Capital Male’ area of Maldives for Local Council Elections and Women’s Development Committee, only 518 polling stations has begun their work.
While the voting began early morning at 07:00 for the whole country, both EC and several local media outlets have noted that the amount of people arriving to vote is considerably less. For the Local Council Elections and Women’s Development Committee, a total of 273,128 people are yet to vote before the polling stations close at 18:00 today.
