The Supreme Court (SC) has scheduled for Monday the first hearing in the constitutional case submitted by Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) seeking a remedy for the obstruction in conducting the no-confidence motion against Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed.
The court has now issued summons for the hearing, scheduled to be held at 10am on Monday.
MDP seeks an injunction from the SC stating that no other work of the parliament can be conducted until the matter of no-confidence is decided upon. The court accepted the case on Monday this week.
The motion, submitted to parliament with 49 signatures from majority party MDP, has been consecutively placed on the parliament agenda since Sunday. However, each of these sittings have been cancelled due to Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla's failure to attend them, on grounds of being on sick leave citing dengue.
The Parliament Secretariat maintains that the Parliament regulations stipulate that a sitting conferring on a no confidence motion against the Speaker can only be presided over by the Deputy Speaker.
MDP's Legal Team disagrees, stating that the Secretary General's decision contravenes Article 82 of the Constitution and Article 44 of the Parliament Regulations. They say this is because Article 44 details that the five longest serving parliamentarians can preside over a parliament sitting in the absence of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker.
MDP's case also highlights that Article 205 (d) of the Parliament Regulations prohibit the parliament from conducting any further work without deciding on a submitted motion of no-confidence against the Speaker.
The Democrats, of which Nasheed is a member, has announced their intention to make an intervention in this case submitted to SC.
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