President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Monday ratified the annulment of a controversial amendment made to the Presidential Elections Act by the previous government, which barred certain political figures from running for presidency.
The president ratified the Third Amendment to the Act, which rescinds the contentious Article 7 (c) of Section 109 of the Constitution, which stated that a presidential candidate should be a Maldivian citizen born to Maldivian parents, and that any individual who held foreign nationality or asylum could run for presidency only 10 years after they surrendered their foreign citizenship or asylum.
The bill to repeal this amendment was passed by the parliament on October 16.
The amendment restricting presidential candidates, which was lobbied by the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) administration, was highly criticised by then-opposition, which claimed that the then-government had amended the Act in order to target former President Mohamed Nasheed, former Vice President Dr. Mohamed Jameel Ahmed, Jumhooree Party leader Qasim Ibrahim, and mathematician Dr Hassan Ugail. While the bill was approved shortly before the 2018 presidential elections, Nasheed and Jameel had been under British asylum at the time, while Qasim sought asylum from Germany. Dr Ugail held dual citizenship of Maldives and Britain.
The current government submitted the motion to nullify this amendment under its electoral pledge to review all the laws and regulations that were passed by the previous administration to target certain entities.
The President's Office stated that, following the ratification, the newly amended Act has been published in the government's gazette.
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