Parliament has voted today against abiding by the Supreme Court (SC)'s February 29 ruling that states it is in contravention of the Constitution to count the total number of parliamentarians without including vacated seats.
Villin'gili constituency MP from main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Saudh Hussain proposed that the parliament does not act in accordance with the Supreme Court's ruling, and instead continue to hold parliament sittings while considering the total number of parliamentarians as 80.
This proposal was seconded by Galolhu North MP Eva Abdulla of The Democrats.
Parliament passed this through 25 votes, with only 2 voting against.
After the vote was concluded, Parliament Speaker Mohamed Aslam announced that based on the decision made through this vote, the total number of parliamentarians will be considered as 80 from now onwards.
At the start of today's sitting, Speaker Aslam announced that the total member of parliamentarians were being counted as 87, including the seats no longer filled by members for various reasons.
He maintained that it would be difficult for him as Speaker to decide to count the total in a different way in consideration of the Supreme Court's ruling on the matter in February.
The Supreme Court has ruled on February 29 that the amendment brought by Parliament to its regulations regarding the manner of counting the total number of parliamentarians contravene the Constitution.
However, it then said that as the amendment submitted for review by the Attorney General's Office in the case had since been revoked by parliament, there was no possible action for the court to take.
After the Supreme Court issued an interim stay order on the implementation of the contested articles and scheduled the hearings for the case for February 25, the General Committee of Parliament approved the removal of these three articles from the rules ahead of the court hearing.
Instead, the committee approved adding a clause to Article 242, that while counting the total number of members, vacant seats will not be counted if there is not sufficient time, as stated in law, remaining in a term for another member to be elected to the seat.
In today's sitting, Aslam proposed that the latter amendment to the Parliament Regulations also be revoked, in light of the Supreme Court's ruling.
He stated that the Supreme Court had declared that the amendments to Article 49 of the Parliament Regulations were in contravention of Article 278 of the Constitution. As the latter changes brought to Article 242, after revoking Article 49 and its subsections, in essence, covers the same ground, Aslam said that it must be accepted that this article, too, would be in contravention of the Constitution.
"I announce that we cannot continue to act on Article 242 of the Parliament Regulations. However, the Supreme Court has not revoked this article. And it is the Parliament itself who can choose to revoke it from the Parliament Regulations," Aslam stated.
Aslam stated that any further parliament work can be proceeded after a decision was made on this matter.
Subsequently, the parliament held a vote, and decided to not abide by the Supreme Court ruling.
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