The third session of the Parliament started on Thursday with 20 bills in the committees.
The session began with 43 members present at the sitting. The presidency announced that four members were on leave.
Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed said a list of 30 bills that the government wished to introduce had been received by the Parliament. The list will be publicized on the Parliament's website sometime on Thursday, he said.
The Speaker shared the statistics of the bills currently in the committees of the Parliament.
Bills in Committee:
Economic Committee - Two bills
Judiciary Committee - Five bills
Social Committee - Two bills
Decentralization Committee - One bill
Public Finance Committee - Three bills
Committee on Security Services - One bill
Environment and Climate Change Committee - Two bills
Joint Committees - Four bills
The Parliament has reconvened for a new session while the main-ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which holds the Parliament's supermajority, is facing internal division and conflict. Speaker Nasheed and his loyal members, and President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and his allies already seem to be functioning as two factions of the same party. Therefore, it is likely that the rivalry between the two factions will increase during the current session of parliament.
At the start of the new Parliament session, an additional member, Villingili MP Saud Hussain, who was elected as an independent member, had signed up for MDP. This increases the number of MDP Parliament members to 66.
