Malé, Maldives – Chairperson of Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and MP for West Henveiru constituency, Hassan Latheef has said that they had filed a filed a complaint at Elections Commission (EC) regarding six ballot boxes of Malé City of Local Council Elections.
Speaking at a press conference held by MDP this evening, MP Latheef told that they had also requested EC to recount these six boxes as there were irregularities in the outcome of the votes from those six boxes. He added that the main issue they had raised was number of invalid votes being high in all six boxes.
MP Latheef told that some of these ballot boxes had more invalid votes than the difference between the winning candidate and the other. He also told that they suspect that valid votes had been declared as invalid and that these votes could change the outcome of the results.
He also told that MDP wished that these boxes to be recounted in the most peaceful environment and requested everyone to pave way for it. MP Latheef’s remarks on maintaining peace at the Elections Center comes while an unrest took place the Elections Center (re-registry hall at the old Jamaluddin School) on April 13, 2021 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.
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.
