900 membership complaints; no need to delay primaries: MDP
Ibrahim Waheed said that the committee does not have the power to postpone the elections and does not believe that such a situation exists.
By
Mohamed Muzayyin Nazim
Around 900 people have filed complaints for not having their names in the voters' list for this month's MDP elections, but the party’s elections committee has said that there is no need to postpone the elections.
The first press conference of the national assembly-elected committee was held at the party office on Monday to organise the primary to be held on 28 January to select a candidate to be fielded by MDP in this year's presidential election.
The committee's chairman Ibrahim Waheed said that while the deadline to submit complaints to the member list expired at 4 p.m. on Sunday, most of the complaints were missing from the voters' list. Among them, he said:
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683 people don't have their names registered in any party in the Election Commission
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212 people named in other parties in the Election Commission's list
"For these complaints, the grievance committee has looked into the issues. Today, they will start responding to all these complaints," said Ibrahim Waheed, who is also the party's deputy chairperson.
Regarding the complaints, Ibrahim Waheed further said that he has received four letters from party president Mohamed Nasheed. He also responded to the issues raised in the letters.
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First letter: The concern expressed in the letter was that the National Assembly had declared the primary before the election committee was formed; Ibrahim Waheed said that this was not an issue given the basic rules and the way it had been implemented in the past.
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Second letter: Starting to sign forms of support for President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih from December 5 before the elections are announced; Ibrahim Waheed said that it was not an issue as both candidates had sent their support forms on December 1.
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Third letter: Those who were on the electoral roll as of December 18 are eligible to vote in the primary, while 457 people who entered the party after that date have been added to the voters' list; considering the complaint is genuine, it has been decided to remove them from the list, said Ibrahim Waheed.
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Ibrahim Waheed did not address the complaint of the fourth letter
'No reason to postpone polls'
Nasheed's campaign believes that the party's register is "contaminated". However, the party had earlier denied this, saying it was a valid document. Nasheed's campaign has demanded that the elections be postponed until the register issue is resolved.
Replying to a question from Atoll Times at a press conference on whether there was a situation where the elections should be postponed, Ibrahim Waheed said that the committee does not have the power to postpone the elections and does not believe that such a situation exists. He said it was the responsibility of the committee to conduct the elections as per the party's decisions.
"After the resolution [passed by the National Assembly to clean up the register], this is not the first elections we are holding. In view of the fact that elections have been held and done in the past, this committee does not find that there is a situation where elections should be delayed," Said Ibrahim Waheed.
He added:
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Nasheed's claims that members supporting him are being expelled from the party are false
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President Solih's family members were among the 39,000 expelled members and they too rejoined the party
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Around 18,000 out of 39,000 members are in the ranks of other parties; only 5,000 members rejoined the party
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No one who is not in the electoral rolls till December 18 can vote
In May this year, the National Assembly cleared the list as promised by Chairperson Fayyaz Ismail, saying that some of the members in the list had entered other parties. The members who were dropped from the list were given three months to rejoin the party.
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