President of Elections Commission (EC), Ahmed Shareef, declared Monday that the Supreme Court's verdict to uphold the presidential election results, proves that President-Elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's victory was not a result of the EC favouring him.
Shareef made the statement on Monday while speaking to the press. He said that the apex court's verdict shows that the proceedings of the Presidential Election were in line with the Constitution.
He also said that the verdict by the Supreme Court was a great relief to the commission as well.
Although incumbent President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom initially announced that he accepted the outcome of the election, which he lost to Solih by a wide margin of 38,000 votes, the incumbent had later filed a case at the Supreme Court seeking to annul the election results.
The case was based on issues raised by PPM, including the "unlawful" awarding of ballot paper printing to M7 Pvt Ltd; the alleged use of special inker rings and erasable pens at polling stations; doubtful security at locations where ballot papers were kept; the abrupt shift of the National Complaints Bureau to another location; the lack of use of UV lights to cross-check the legitimacy of the ballot papers; campaign activities held at polling centres, and other such issues.
However, noting that none of these allegations was proven with concrete evidence, the full bench of the top court unanimously ruled that there were no grounds to order the EC to hold the election again.
The Elections Commission had been repeatedly denying these allegations, asserting that they had not favoured any of the candidates during the election proceedings.