The Elections Commission (EC) has released a new political party registration form to avoid a recurrent problem of people being registered for political parties without their knowledge.
President of the EC Fuad Thaufeeq said the commission had uncovered an estimated 900-1100 people registered to political parties without their knowledge, “from all political parties.”
Fuad said the commission had sent notice to all the political parties that they would not accept any other registration form than the new form.
”Before all the parties had their own registration forms,” Fuad said. ”Those forms only required the person’s name and identity card number.”
Fuad said the new form required the person’s fingerprint, two witnesses and their signature.
”If anyone complains about the registrations [from now on] we can check the fingerprint through the police fingerprint database,” he said. ”If a form is presented with the wrong fingerprint we can identify the person and charge him with forgery, giving false information and signing another person’s signature.”
He said that the commission was contemplating creating a law concerning false registration.
”We cannot charge anybody over the 900-1100 false registrations,” he said, ”but hereafter we can identify it and treat it as a serious issue.”
He said the new registration form was now effective.
Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Ahmed Mahloof said that he was pleased with the new procedure.
Mahloof claimed that there were many recent complaints by DRP members that they had been registered instead as members of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).
”They have stolen lots of our people,” he claimed. ”MDP would not even have a membership of 25,000 people.”
MDP MP Ahmed Easa said the new procedure was good and would avoid false registration.
Easa said MDP had received many complaints from people that they were registered in a political party without their knowledge.
”This form will make it more difficult for people to be registered in political parties,” he said.
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Thank you. This has to be one of the best polices instituted by the electoral commission. We received so many complaints from GIP members, that they were showing up as being registered to the "poverty alleviation party." And I'm sure the situation is far worse in the larger parties.
This is good news. I think the way to move forward is to re-confirm the already existing registrations as well in order to make the system error free.
How about making the list of party affiliations available over the internet when the ID card number is entered? Or is there a privacy issue?
I'm not sure what the big deal is. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on this. Do political parties in the Maldives receive public funding based on their roll? If so the easiest way to address the issue is to change the funding formula or do away with public funding altogether. Surely these politicians are not naive enough to think that membership of a political party obliges an elector to cast their vote in favour of that party. Are they taking advantage of politically immature constituents by telling them that having registered in a political party they have to vote for that party?
In mature democracies political party membership is very low now. It is not uncommon in such countries for parties with relatively low membership to be leading the government. So perhaps these politicians in the Maldives have to grow up a bit.
”If anyone complains about the registrations [from now on] we can check the fingerprint through the police fingerprint database,” he said. ”If a form is presented with the wrong fingerprint we can identify the person and charge him with forgery, giving false information and signing another person’s signature.”
Identify what person?
Identify the person how?
The whole form may be forged. In some instances by one party to sabotage another. So how is the EC going to identify the person? I don't know I just don't get it.
Is it true that Musthafa Luthfi goes around schools gathering membership for Qaumee Ihthihaadh?