Monday's parliament sitting cancelled over lack of quorum

Parliament sitting for Monday, October 9, was cancelled owing to lack of quorum despite several notable tasks put on agenda.

Deputy speaker of parliament and North-Galolhu MP Eva Abdulla, who chaired Monday's sitting, announced the adjournment of the sitting due to the failure to attract the minimum requirement of 22 MPs, as mandated by parliament regulations.

The components on Monday's agenda included granting approval for two ambassadors, a case submitted by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) regarding the removal of a judge, the prolonged industrial relations bill, the bill to change the composition of JSC, and four pending resolutions.

The lack of quorum in recent parliament sittings has become a common issue.

Parliament speaker Mohamed Nasheed has generally granted additional time to reach the necessary quorum, as seen in recent sittings when The Democrats submitted a resolution for a governance system change.

Nasheed gave additional time for all previous week's sittings to see if adequate number of members attended the chambers within the provided time.

Monday's sitting was canceled due to the Maldivian Democratic Party's (MDP) renewed effort to submit a no-confidence motion against speaker Mohamed Nasheed.

A total of 48 MDP MPs signed the no-confidence motion out of the 55 in the parliament. A no-confidence against the Speaker will be approved by a minimum of 45 members voting in favor of it.

The MDP parliamentary group said that they were moving forward with the no-confidence motion once again, alleging that Nasheed's intentions were to harm the party for personal motivations.

Although MDP previously submitted a no-confidence motion against Nasheed, it was never addressed in the parliament after both him and Eva, against whom another no-confidence motion was submitted by the ruling party, refused to preside over the sittings.

Parliament regulations state that the speaker will preside as chair for no-confidence debates against the deputy speaker, while the deputy speaker will preside as chair for no-confidence debates against the speaker.

Besides the double no-confidence motions, another issue that hindered parliament proceedings was the impasse in forming parliament's standing committees after 13 MPs from MDP exited the party.

The parliament also states that the timing for no-confidence debates should be set by the general committee of the parliament, which too was not functional after the members exited MDP.

The parliament went into a near two-month deadlock due to these issues.

After MDP's defeat in the first round of the presidential election, Nasheed's no-confidence by the party was rescinded in a bid to seek The Democrats' favor for the runoff election.

The Democrats, founded by Nasheed, however chose to remain neutral in the runoff election and later stated they would have a notable role in the new government led by Dr. Mohamed Muizzu.

The party also claimed that MDP's no-confidence motion against Nasheed was an attempt to disrupt Dr. Muizzu's swearing-in as the next president and to divert attention from the alleged misconduct and corruption in the current government led by president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.