After Supreme Court interjected individual members of The Democrats from intervening into the constitutional lawsuit filed by the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) regarding Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed's no-confidence, the party itself has decided to intervene into the case.
Earlier, the top court rejected intervention of nine The Democrats members into the case.
However, the application for intervention by Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and People's National Congress (PNC) coalition, which is scheduled to assume power on November 17, was accepted by the court.
According to The Democrats' parliamentary group leader Ali Azim, the individual members were denied intervention since it was a constitutional lawsuit.
After individual members of The Democrats were denied intervening into the case, the party held an interim committee meeting on Sunday, where it was decided the party, as a legal entity, will seek intervention into the case.
"We are currently working on submitting the letter of request for the party to intervene," Azim added.
With the hearing of the case scheduled for Monday, November 6, Attorney General Ibrahim Riffath will be representing the parliament in court.
MDP filed the lawsuit challenging the decision made by the parliament secretariat to 'park' the no-confidence motion in favor of expediting the budget bills, which included both the supplementary budget bill for 2023 and the 2024 state budget.
Additionally, the ruling party challenged parliament secretariat's decision to accept only the Deputy Speaker as the chair for the Speaker's no-confidence motion sitting.
Despite the notice period for the no-confidence motion signed by 49 MDP parliamentary members expired, attempts to table the motion on the agenda since Sunday last week failed due to Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla's leave of absence caused by contracting dengue fever.
While Nasheed's no-confidence motion has been put on agenda for the fifth time, Eva recently recused herself from presiding as the chair for the matter, citing its submission to the Supreme Court as the lawsuit by the ruling party.
Meanwhile, MDP's legal team believes that the parliament Secretary General's decision was in violation of Article 82 of the Maldives Constitution and Article 44 of the parliament regulation. The team argues that Article 44 of the parliament regulation stipulates eligible parliament MPs can preside as chair in the case both the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker cannot preside.
Article 44 of the regulation cites that one out of the five longest-serving MPs of the parliament can be appointed to preside as the chair of parliament sittings in the absence of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker.
Additionally, MDP has referred to Article 205(d) of the parliament regulation in its argument that no other issue will proceed in the legislature without first addressing the no-confidence motion.
The party's argument for this is a challenge on the parliament secretariat's decision put budget bills on Tuesday sitting's agenda, last week.
The secretariat argued that the budget bills required immediate attention and discussion in the parliament before the end of October in accordance with the Public Finance Act. As such, Tuesday last week was the last legally allowed date for submission of the bills.
MDP MPs however, intervened the sitting and prohibited Vilufushi MP Hassan Afeef from proceeding.
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