The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)’s National Council has unanimously decided to boycott presidential elections if a court ruling bars former President Mohamed Nasheed from competing.
Nasheed was elected the party’s presidential candidate following the results of internal elections held last month.
Despite being the party’s sole candidate, following the final count of the 258 ballot boxes Nasheed recorded 31,798 votes in favour to 269 against his being the party’s presidential candidate, after more than two-thirds of the party’s membership turned out to vote.
The MDP’s current membership stands at 48,181 according the Election Commission (EC)’s figures, giving it the largest membership of any party in the country.
However, earlier this week the Prosecutor General forwarded a case against the former President to the Hulhumale magistrate court, concerning his detention of Chief Criminal Court Judge Abdulla Mohamed during his final days in office. Nasheed’s government had accused the judge of “taking the entire criminal justice system in his fist”.
If sentenced, Nasheed would potentially be barred from competing in a presidential election. The matter appears temporarily stalled after the Hulhumale Court yesterday rejected the case as falling outside its jurisdiction, returning it the Prosecutor General.
“This is our candidate, and if they are going to stop him from seeking election, then we are not going to play by their rules,” said MDP Spokesperson Hamid Abdul Ghafoor.
“We have experienced 30 years under [former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom]. His trials have always been politically motivated, and this is a politically motivated trial”, he aded.
“The MDP votes that elected Nasheed [as its presidential candidate] represent twice the registration of the entire Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM), and more than 4000 votes than the total membership of the Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (DRP),” Ghafoor noted.
“Gayoom is on the back foot. The moment Gayoom said he would not attend talks to negotiate, he isolated himself. His rhetoric and utterances about leaving the Commonwealth are not understood by the democratic international community – we see this man going against the majority. We will not stop seeking early elections, and will continue direct action.”
President’s Office Spokesperson Abbas Adil Riza said he felt the issue was an “internal matter for the MDP. It is not for the government to comment.”
“I don’t think affect it will affect the legitimacy of the elections,” he said. “Without a congress the decisions of the MDP National Council do not reflect the will of the party’s members.”
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coming from a guy who absolutely dislikes that rodent from the soles of his heart, Barring Nasheed from the elections is the dumbest thing anyone can do
Abbas Adil Riza, still as delusional as ever....and it's too funny when a coup terrorist like you talks about legitimacy of anything!
We love mdp and Annie. Annie is is our hero. We dont want to have erection without Annie.
Adil riza is becoming the next comical Ali.
We should banish Anni to an uninhabited island. His crimes against the Maldivian people should not go unpunished.
The MDP is truly a joke now.
If Nasheed is barred from the elections because of a criminal conviction or due debt according to established procedure and completely within due process, then the MDP's governing body is morally bound not to violate the electoral rights of MDP members by boycotting the most important event for which a political party is formed.
Shame on you Hamid Abdul Ghafoor. Just because the international community is playing it safe by refusing to comment too strongly against Nasheed's mismanagement of the country does not mean that you yourself are beyond public scrutiny within this country.
The MDP has truly become a party that revolves around one personality. A sad day for a political party that was born out of a vibrant reform movement. I pity pre-2008 members of the MDP who still believe the party retains any vestige of its initial character.
who would ever doubt the conclusion reached by the gamaaru party. all hails and prostrates to seyku Nasheed.
and 31000' my foot, if MDP is so sure about 31,000 then present a list of the names and addresses of the people who voted.certainly this was not the amount of people showcased by Rajje Bodu Dhogu TV.
it simply boggles the mind that so many people would vote for such a liar and hypocrite but what can one do to a developing country where the former president himself encourages crime, supports homosexuality and releases 200 convicts in the name of GAmaaru Furusathu.
Civil disobedience will ensure the elections are a farce. Very silly idea to prosecute Nasheed by current govt.
Yawwwwwwwn!
But if they allow Anni to run he will win again. Gayoom learned his lesson about what happens when you allow free elections, didn't he?
This wouldn't be a problem, why? Because if the voters elect a candidate with the majority of the voter population the results would be genuine whether MDP members vote or not.
So cool.
The world is watching!!! An election without Annie would be the end for the Maldives, literally!
"Chemical Abbas" is deaf, dumb and blind!
@tsk tsk
You are right, the MDP is rotating around one man. This is how good strong leaders through out history all over the democratic free world make their mark! This country needs a good strong man in charge like Annie. He has to be allowed to compete.
Look at your puppet traitor leader with no support. Whre is Waheed in the last two weeks?? He is the Invisible Man because he has been ordered to shut up by his puppet masters. The illegal coup regime want to run things from the back seat and Waheed is a mere puppet.
Strong?
You are associating that word with the man who;
- Needed the support of the Wahhabi movement to hold onto government which led to him caving into their demands to; (i) establish a Ministry of Islamic Affairs, (ii) pardon radicals convicted for treason and violence in Himandhoo and (iii) allow organizations like IFM and Jamiyyat Salaf a free hand to proselytize across the country.
- Was forced to bribe the most dubious characters from other political parties to secure a majority within Parliament.
- Was forced under to give into pressure from political activists within his party providing them with political portfolios.
- Had to stand back and watch while Dr. Didi and Alhan Fahmy cruised to victory in the most open internal election held within the MDP weakening his hold on the party and strengthening the position of elements opposed to him.
- Lost the support of the civil service and security forces leading to his ultimate downfall.
- And of course the most obvious point, Nasheed could not hold on to a full five year term regardless of the wide leeway provided to him by Western governments and Western-backed media institutions and international NGOs who turned a blind eye to all his faults.
@tsk tsk
There is no Integrity and honest intent in a comment on morality coming from a successful lawyer who begs for money from the people who built empires for the gayooms. "I need some cash" goes down as one of the most shameful moments in our political history and its part of popular culture.
Compare your own behavior or 30 years of rule by gayyoom to annis 3 year mismanagement. At least, police didn't beat people like they do now, we got an inter atoll transportation network, foundations were laid for housing projects, universal healthcare and welfare schemes for single, mothers and elderly, tax reforms, water n sewerage networks in outer islands etc etc.
What happened during 30 years of your glorious leader prior to the revolution following Evan naseems death. Champa, universal and Gasim consolidated their wealth, two son in laws (nadey and shuaib) won a successive number of resort bids, those who owned resorts before were the only ones allowed into the game, maldives maintained n covered up a shady human rights n torture record, reclaimed Hulhumale but couldn't develop or populate it for a number of years, established many primary schools across the country but not enough higher education nor jobs to employ the youth, leading to drug addiction n violence on streets at an epidemic level.
It felt now and still today for gayoom To do anything Anni did in 3 years would take another 30 years.
I seriously don't think there's much to show for. Perhaps this is not about facts, more about personal distaste. Anni may not be as pompous or god like to worship as gayyoom. To you He may be more the street smoker, democracy for all believer with a hippie following. But the sad fact today is many believe the hippie has done more for the country than your god. And that's why you have gotten this sudden attack of impartial conscience n feebly attempt to bring a cloaked justice within a corrupt judiciary by taking Anni to trial whilst you ignorantly sit on the morals you preach right next to a person who really should be on trial for countless number of violations of the constitution and rights of the people.
The time has passed to play around and get away with it for gayooms and your kind as well. If you have morals put both gayoom n Anni on trial and then try to see if you have minerals and vitamins to contest for presidency.
Shame on you for being this educated and so ignorant.
@tsk tsk
as you read this reaction to your comment with a smug smile and a head thinking poor commenters do not know any better. Please for a minute contemplate and ponder on this.
A large minority of this country is revolving around 1 very persistent and at times wild person. And he is after the presidency. He will jeopardize your best laid plans not through due process, but by civil unrest, because like it or not, it is now well established fact that Anni can rally more civilians on the streets than the police and any other single party can.
Maldivians are generally bored at large and frustrated at large. They are always looking for something to entertainment themselves, gossip about and recently someone to hate as their hobby.
This platform that you all are setting up feeds exactly to those desires. Its political entertainment, massive gossip potential and opens the door to hate gayooom, waheed and the regime.
it will be like the movie gladiator with russel crowe- the corrupt emperor setting up the collosseum to bring bloodshed as entertainment to distract his people.
In this case, the dictator gayoom and his regime puts poor gladiator anni on judiciary floor and goes for a fight.
now how did that movie end? yes, the poor gladiator rose up against the emperor in front of the public and beat him.
Everyone wants a hero. And its far easier now to make anni the hero than gayoom. If gayoom wins, it just puts a real bad taste to this ending.
so bewarned its a dangerous game you are playing. you just might loose and that will be a shameful defeat.
It is far more civil to call for fresh elections. because it is obvious the presidency was overthrown under suspicious circumstances.
@idhurees on Thu, 19th Jul 2012 8:02 PM
:facepalm:
@shimy
"It simply boggles the mind that so many people would vote for such a liar and hypocrite as" Maumoon Abdul Gayoom despite 30 years of dictatorship, torture, corruption and daylight robbery from our people.
"But what can one do to a developing country where the former president " Gayoom himself encouraged crime by establishing a judiciary with corrupt judges, making sure they did not get proper legal education, supported homosexuality and released every single criminal and drug lord who fed drugs to the convicts thrown into jail for substance abuse.
@ tsk tsk
Toal routine rhetoric response from the illegal coup d'tat regime!!! Disgusting!!!
these MDP thugs will never accept any criticism against the dictator Anni.
TSK, people like yourself need to be more active in our society and need to be our leaders not criminal minded Anni.
Minivan is a propaganda machine of MDP and people like Ahmed are being paid to do spread the Anni propaganda here in this forum to show international community that majority of Maldivian are in favor of the dictator .
You wait and see .Anni never will be able to win any election in this country ever. This is proved in the last two MP election where MDP lost the two seats.
@tsk tsk .. you have been put in place now.. so go get some cough syrup before your nightly rounds of commenting on Minivan.. this has been ordered by Enherimage Golha party anyway.. so you will have to keep doing it until your last days...
@mode, which side of the Maldives do you reside in? Mordis or Maldives?
how ironic?? we all know who actually needs to take the cough syrup and have a good nights sleep.
we all know who has been roaming around like a lunatic,making his own supporters, thugs and criminals infact when did seyku anni have a good nights sleep this year.
VERIKAMA hure dhangehifa? the same goes to Maumoon too!!
PS:and for those of you who think that i am a goalha party fan you are very wrong. i'm just a simple human being who can identify right from wrong. let's see aniya, the witch, find out who i am??!!
err... does that mean that 50,000 MDP members wont vote in the next elections ?
And if they dont vote, they're gonna continue shouting WHERE IS MY VOTE for the next six years........
(imagines MDP protesting every day until 2018, traffic blocking, and people shouting until 2018 elections.....)
NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo ................
(falls off chaiir)....
adam,
It does not matter where i am from and I am a Maldivian like you and I should have same rights as you.
Anni failed because he is racist and he openly keep telling that he will show his evil side for the those who does not support him and today he is no man and had become a thug leader.
@ Aisha
hey, curb your patience, you'll get your share of retaliation from gaYyoom since the so called educated but foul mouthed IBRA (Ironic but he described his own life;being married to a girl who's 20 years younger than him; the girl being a student of him when she was at ITE, in the BODUGAMAArumuzaaharaa on 17th feb)
has filed cases against him.
why don't you; Aisha, file cases against gayyoom rather than whining and whimpering about it???!!!be courageous
still don't understand why the Gamaaru party is so hung up on the "filthy rich".
don't they also have filthy rich people like resort owner shiyam(who owes a lot of money to Mira)and reefside Zahir.
even the coup millionaire helped seyku Anni to reach his goal so why the fuss now?????
mode, your commments are pretty entertaining to read. Why? You're delusional. 🙂
@RecycleBra
Either a PPM supporter or a puppet paid with drug dealers money police has in abundance!
I guess at one time you or your family had a medical problem. You got charity cash from gayoom and his cronies and till you die, you shall remain their slave!...go join police..they need uneducated people like you
...annis propaganda as 'Mode' described, is better to many people than 'wahabi preaching and tecahsings'
* women to stay in doors and commit to raising children and f...their husbands daily
* Children should not be vaccinated
* No use of contraceptive (must do an HIV test to all)
* Education is not for women,
* Women are sex slaves
Which god said all these??? modu can you pls justify this propaganda from the unshaven?
Gays and Lesbians need their rights in Maldives
Hi JJ
Have you been threatened not to publish the truth we write?
You publish weird claims from 'modu' which have an negative impact on the community in the islands..yet you cant publish a simple truth about WAHABIS!!!!
Our women are caged like dogs, our little girls are sexually abused, we have pedophiles that are Wahabis and you know it.
Are you changing colors? Stick to facts, dont ever be biased.
Moosa soot or sit.
Free and fair election or NO ELECTION, otherwise by definition it is a dictatorship...Duh!!
@MODE speaks a truth which is hard for many of us liberal minded, hungry for justice observers to digest. We hope so much in Anni because of his appeals to liberty.
Yet MODE also has to digest a hard truth. Given the socio-cultural framework of the Maldives, it takes a suspicious minded, ultra-manipulative, aggressive, able to be super charming and charismatic, impatient, often nasty, vindictive and often empathy deprived demagogue to beat one...
No President can bring the massive changes many of us so naively expected Anni could bring. Us liberals demanded too much from Anni, we pushed him and pushed him to do the impossible, until he tried it, and destroyed himself. We greatly overestimated the amount of power Anni had. Yet, our pushing him was partly his fault because of the grandiose nature of the promises he made before he came into power, my was I gullible!
Anni never had that much real power, as most of what he had was given by Maumoon on strict conditions, it was an illusion of power, and Anni knew it! REAL power is never given it is allways taken through resistance and sacrifice. Yet Anni and the protestors had resisted enough, and made enough sacrifice to win the hearts of MANY of us, but it was not quite enough to make the changes he wanted to make.
Before Anni came into "power", by accepting Maumoon's election conditions, MDP accepted the appearance of power knowing fully well that they would have no real power. Anni and MDP thinkers knew that the judiciary and the power brokers in the army - old NSS Gayoom loyalists, would be in Maumoon's control, and that meant that they (MDP) would have no real power.
The plan was, win the hearts of the people, and THEN take real power. Sadly, however, Anni has a heart full of defiance, which was (is) inspirational as a protestor. But as a president his single minded devotion caused him to defy and alienate many of those who had a different view to his. That defiance towards otherwise good people was rather stupid of Anni because many of those ppl were good ppl who Anni needed for support! Perhaps Anni was listening to war minded tyrants lusting for power and revenge rather than listening to reason, and then, his frustration intensified due to the fact that the opposition merely wanted to destroy the Government rather than make it accountable.
Anyway, what is sad to see is so many ppl hurting themselves in protest, angry, desperate for the realization of ideals which Anni won't be able to deliver even IF he came into power...UNLESS there is a shift in the thinking of the people!
So I repeat the point of my comment. The style of Government a nation has is a manifestation of its culture.
hail cult leader Anni!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mohamed-nasheed/maldives-mohamed-nasheed_b_1686136.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Moosa Soot!. Oh Sit
Just to clarify. YES! Anni can be, as MODE explains, a suspicious minded, ultra-manipulative, aggressive, able to be super charming and charismatic, impatient, often nasty, vindictive and often empathy deprived demagogue. MODE is right! Yet it took an ANNI to stand up against Maumoon EFFECTIVELY!
It is stupid fighting for Maumoon, or Anni, or anybody else believing they can bring in a just and fair society unless their is a massive shift in the thinking!
By thinking I mean the cultivation of a culture of tolerance, empathy and reason.
It is frustrating listening to Maldivians complain about tyrants oppressing them, whether Anni, or Maumoon, because they simply can't see that the tyrant in the executive is the product of the tyranny in their own thinking!
hey, why the fuss over the wahhabis, isn't seyku anni who gave permission for them to speak out in public. why the double standards??
and for your information, islam does not prohibit vaccination( those wahhabis made this up), women going out to work(although this has a very detrimental impact on their children if the mother become ignorant and invisible because children need their mother the most and not a bangaalhee)
and what is so bad about having sex with your husband if both of them love each other. is'nt this love all about.
if it is'nt then i don't understand what these hollywood flics like titanic and the notebook is about????
support Bens(do you really exist)thought about seyku anni being a down to earth person at the initial stage of his presidency and you wont even believe that i supported him.
however with time seyku Anni proved me wrong so many times with his lies and hypocrisy(he thought maldivians were gamaaru like his seyku party people)
now with all of this violence and brutal attacks, use of narcotics and big lies from the bodudhogu tv has made my doubts into truth. that's why i say he is dumb????
@Lesbian
who ever said islam prohibits education to women??? somebody must have brainwashed you so get the truth, please!!
Ben you are right and Anni had the guts to go against Gayyoom, But there were other who also took a very bold steps go against Gayyoom.
I have no doubt that Anni had a lot of pressure from the opposition but this does not mean that he need to collapse and rather he should have shown much of the leadership .
It is worth to note that no one had thought that Gayyoom would be defeated in 2009 and when MPs were reviewing and amending the new constitution, they were thinking the ways and means to make it difficult for the gayyoom to run the country and took most of power under people Majlis. But it turn out against it and but the change had happened because the coalition had put huge effort to remove Gayyoom.
However parliament had made the biggest mistakes and constitution should amend and revise in such a way to benefit to the people and should not target for specific person.
It is quite sad today again parliament is doing same mistake rather looking at the future and trying to find ways and means to remove the executive power from the President.
I believe that majority of the Maldivian are not yet ready to understand fully the democracy and neither they have the capacity to understand. Each one of us are lawyer and a politician and each one of are expert on everything . Until we know how to excursive the freedom and understand the responsibilities that carries with the freedom and limit that it has and the boundaries that goes with, we will never be able to get the full taste of freedom.
@Do I exist? Why do ppl want me to cast doubt over my existence? I mean, it is kind of flattering to share a unique feature in common with the Divine (The question of my existence is in question amongst Minivan news readers as is the existence of a God) but I don't need alienating solipsism loaded onto my already too heavy set set of complexes I already struggle to deal with...
But is the existential property necessary for?????? only joking...
Yes I exist, I am merely an Abd'Allah like yourself, just a small person, but I am an Australian guy married to a Maldivian, who happened to come to be hurt by a Maldivian and come to care for the nation and chose to express it on here, which may have been a mistake, but, for many reasons, I am anxious for the welfare of Maldives, it hurts me too much to see ppl crushed by fear.
@idhurees. The pitiful state of the country: no election, no erection? I pity the womenfolk.
I am seriously getting sick of politics in the human rights and so called democracy. First I had to deal with 30 years of dictatorship and torture. furthermore, then Mdp kept accusing the dictator of corruption,treason and I was thinking there goes the civilians right to self determination . And then we all voted the great anni and he had his golden days . But did he establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate past torture cases, did u work to eradicate systematic torture, did he work to alleviate corruption,did he give way to the Mdp activists to grant contracts specially to Eva , prepaid Shiuna,shauna,maria etc. And then anni was deposed in coup deta and keep fighting with gayyoom and his descendents. So it is about time we see another true leader in this country .