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.
(0)Dislikes
(0)