Adhaalath Party loses budget funding as membership drops below 10,000

Adhaalath Party (AP) has been excluded from the list of political parties eligible to receive annual state funding for the first time, as its membership has fallen below the required 10,000 membership threshold.

Elections Commission (EC) announced today that only four political parties had 10,000 or more members as of November 25th, the date Parliament passed the state budget for next year.

Elections Commission announced that as of November 25th, only four political parties meet the minimum 10,000-member requirement to receive annual state budget funding. The current ruling party, PNC, leads the list with 68,665 members.

They are followed by the opposition MDP, which has 43,765 members. The remaining two eligible parties are the Jumhooree Party, with 13,456 members, and the Maldives Development Alliance, which has 10,300 members.

According to the Political Parties Act, the government must allocate an amount between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent of the annual state budget for political parties.

This fund is distributed among parties that have a membership of 10,000 or more, based proportionally on their membership count.

Although the Adhaalath Party was on the list to receive state funding up until September of this year, the data released by the EC today confirms its exclusion.

Adhaalath Party, which has been critical of the current government's policies and was previously aligned with the former ruling MDP, now has 8,844 members.

According to the EC's website, there are currently nine registered political parties in the Maldives. Beyond the four parties eligible for funding, the membership counts are:

Beyond those four, the Maldives has five other registered parties, all of which fall below the 10,000-member threshold and will not receive state funding for the next financial year.

The Adhaalath Party, which previously received funding, now has 8,844 members. The other registered parties include the Maldives National Party with 5,836 members, The Democrats with 3,547 members, the People's National Front with 3,046 members, and the Maldives Labor and Democratic Party, which is the smallest with 1,874 members.

For the current year (2025) budget, MVR 27 million was allocated to five political parties. The allocation was:

EC distributes political party funding based on the membership count as of the date the annual budget is passed by the People's Majlis.

The EC also announced that beginning January 1st of next year; the commission will enable a new feature on its special portal allowing members to instantly withdraw their membership from a political party. This means that individuals who do not hold any legal office will have the personal freedom to withdraw their party membership immediately starting January 1st.