Malé, Maldives – Acting leader of the opposition PNC/ PPM coalition, Abdul Raheem Abdulla (Adhurey) has said that Speaker of Parliament and President of Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), Mohamed Nasheed is not able to digest the Local Council Election results.
Adhurey had said this after things escalated at the Elections Center (re-registry hall at the old Jamaluddin School) when MDP President and Speaker of Parliament Nasheed entered the Election Center, with MDP Vice President Ahmed Shifaz, Chairperson Hassan Latheef and Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla with other politicians.
Following Speaker Nasheed entering in to the Elections Center, Adhurey said that Nasheed was trying to meddle with the results by influencing the officials and that the opposition wont give the change for Speaker Nasheed to do this. He also said that even if they had to stay at the Elections Center over night, that they would do it.
Adhurey told that Speaker Nasheed could not ‘digest’ the fact that MDP had lost several key seats to PPM, including Malé City mayorship and other council seats. In the local council elections held last Saturday, opposition Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) candidates won seats in MDP strongholds including winning majority in Malé council and taking the Malé mayors seat.
PPM won seats in highly populated MDP super majority areas like Addu City and GDh. Thinadhoo. Nasheed said that these losses were due to the collective negligence of everyone in the party. For years, MDP had dominated over the capital Male’ city area until this year’s local council elections was taken over by the opposition parties.
In addition to PPM candidate Dr. Mohamed Muiz winning the Male’ city by a large margin against Anas, the Vice President of People’s National Congress (PNC) Shujau also won the coucil seat for Hulhumale’. Along with this, the ruling party, MDP has lost majority of the higher positions in the Male’ area to Opposition coalition.
