An amendment to the Constitution has been proposed to prevent increasing the number of Parliament members. The amendment was moved by Jumhooree Party Leader Gasim Ibrahim.
Qasim proposed such an amendment while the number of members of Parliament has been increasing every five years. The 17th Parliament had 77 members, while the 18th Parliament had 85 members. The current Parliament has 87 elected members.
The proposed amendment was made public by JP on Monday night. The amendment states that if the number of members of Parliament continues to increase, it will be more than the number of parliamentarians needed to represent the people of a small country like the Maldives. It further said increasing the number of parliamentarians would cause economic and other challenges and that it is important to fix the number of Parliament members in the Constitution.
Therefore, the amendment proposes to keep the number of members to be elected to the Parliament as 87 in the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker and President of the main-ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has expressed support for Qasim's proposed amendment. Nasheed said Qasim had proposed an important amendment and that it is also important to think about the composition and the role of the Parliament in addition to the number of Parliament members.
