President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has ratified an amendment to the law to extend the deadline for applying to contest in the presidential election.
Section 5 of the Presidential Elections Act now states that those who wish to contest elections should be given at least 10 days to apply to the Election Commission( EC).
However, an amendment proposed by Kelaa MP Ibrahim Shareef on behalf of the government and passed by the parliament on Monday extended the duration to 14 days.
Once the amendment is ratified and published in the Gazette, candidates will get four additional days to apply for the September 9 presidential elections.
As per the dates given by the Election Commission earlier, the deadline for contesting the elections was from July 23 to August 3. However, with this amendment to the act, the deadline will be extended by another four days.
During the debate in several parliament sittings, members raised questions on the rationale behind the four-day extension of the current deadline for filing nominations.
The members highlighted that the existing law already mandated a minimum of 10 days for submitting election applications. Therefore, they argued that even without the amendment, the Election Commission had the authority to extend the period to 14 days if deemed necessary, as there was no legal restriction preventing such an extension.
However, the members who defended the bill said that explicitly including a 14-day application period in the law would provide more opportunities for individuals to participate in elections.
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