Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Ahmed Mahlouf, of the faction led by former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, today accused the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of “misleading the public over the extent of their support” and “attempting to lure more citizens to the party.”
”In all the elections held so far, be they Local Councils Elections or Parliamentary Elections, the citizens have said they oppose the current government and its party MDP,” Mahlouf claimed. ”So today what MDP do is gather all the supporters they have all around the Maldives and buy MPs, trying to show the rest of the country that they have more support than the opposition.”
Mahlouf alleged that MDP was attempting to “psychologically play with the minds of the citizens.”
”They do have some supporters in Male’, and what they do is gather all their supporters to one place, take pictures and show them to the other citizens, trying to make them feel that MDP has more support than it does,” he said. ”In the Local Council Elections MDP won only 379,494 votes while the opposition won 565,919 votes.”
Mahlouf claimed the MDP would not have won the Presidential elections “without the help of Jumhoory Party (JP) leader MP ‘Burma’ Gasim Ibrahim, Adhaalath Party leader Sheikh Hussein Rasheed and Dhivehi Qaumy Party (DQP) leader Dr Hassan Saeed.”
”But they all have turned their backs against this government now – they all want to change this administration,” said Mahlouf. ”It is really a foregone conclusion that MDP will not win the next presidential election in 2013.”
Mahlouf’s comments followed the defection of two DRP MPs, Ali Waheed and Abdu-Raheem, to the ruling MDP, granting the party the largest voting bloc in the Majlis.
MDP MP Mohamed Shifaz said that both Mahlouf and the DRP had “failed”.
”It is regrettable that someone as young as Mahlouf declined to accept democracy and rather decided to follow a single person,” said Shifaz. ”The entire party failed because some among them wanted to follow this one person.”
Shifaz said that regardless of Mahlouf’s figures, 75 percent of the Maldivian population supported the MDP.
”There are unregistered persons who support the idea of MDP,” he said. ”All the MPs who joined MDP, only joined because they wanted to do so.”
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