Maldives Democratic Party's (MDP) electoral committee has said on Monday that they have no plans to include members disqualified from its registry in its presidential primary election.
The main concern of Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed, who is contesting the election, is that the 39,000 members of MDP who were previously registered in the party have been disqualified, and therefore denied the right to vote.
Speaking at a press conference held by the five-member electoral committee, Ibrahim Waheed said that he does not believe that members supporting a particular candidate have been dismissed.
He said they had received complaints from around 900 people when the deadline for filing complaints regarding the voters' list closed on Sunday. Of these, 683 are not registered under any party under the Election Commission's (EC) purview and 212 complaints were from members who were registered with other parties.
Waheed said there were no plans to add any of these members to the voters' list except those who were registered with MDP prior to December 18, 2022. They will be using EC's registration list to confirm membership.
"A person who is not listed in the EC's registry before December 18 will not be added to the permanent list," Waheed said.
Expressing concern over the incident, Nasheed said at a press conference on Sunday evening that people close to him that would not vote for his opponent, current President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, were removed from the registry. These included his relatives Dr. Ibrahim Nasheed, his wife Laila Ali, and Hamid Abdul Gafoor.
Referring to this, Waheed said Hamid had left the party on his own. He also noted President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's brothers were among the 39,000 dismissed members, but they had filled the required paperwork within the presented deadline and rejoined the party.
"As Hamid's membership termination was delayed, former Chairperson Hassan Latheef contacted the then Secretary General and asked him to contact the election authorities to expedite the process," Waheed said.
However, Hamid later denied the claims made by Waheed on Twitter.
Nasheed had submitted three complaints to the committee. In addition to the complaint about registry, he had proposed that the committee should do all the work of the primary before the party makes the announcement.
Responding to the complaint, Waheed said the committee followed how presidential primaries had been conducted in the past.
Previously, the primary was announced by the then Chairperson of MDP Mariya Ahmed Didi, and the committee was formed after the announcement was made. Later, when Hassan Latheef was in office, he too announced the election, but no separate committee was formed, according to Waheed.
In a third complaint, Nasheed claimed that President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had received the support forms for the party members long ago and that his campaign team had been disclosing social media posts about filling out support forms on December 5.
Waheed said the presence of the photographs on December 5 did not appear to be a problem and that the two candidates were handed the support forms on December 1.
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