The main-ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)'s President and Parliament Speaker, Mohamed Nasheed, has said that thousands of party members were expelled from MDP to rig the primary results in President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's favor.
MDP recently removed almost 40,000 unverified party members from its register ahead of its presidential primary slated for January 28. While the party states that they were removed to match the party's membership registry with the Elections Commission, Nasheed has previously claimed they were removed as they were his supporters. He said they were removed to deprive the members who support him of their voting rights.
Speaking at a campaign rally held in Male' City on Monday night, President Nasheed, who is contesting in the presidential primary against President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, said 39,000 MDP members were registered to other parties without their consent. He alleged the current MDP leadership, in collaboration with the government and the Elections Commission, did it.
"How is a person being included in another party when he did not request the change at the Elections Commission? This is being done through the Election Commission with the intention of removing them from MDP. I would say these are very, very atrocious acts," he said.
President Nasheed reiterated his claim that 39,000 party members were removed from the MDP register out of malice. Along with the votes of these people, the government will lose the votes of a total of 70,000 members, including those who support those removed from the party, said Nasheed. This is the result of the government's atrocity, he said.
"You cannot win an election by rigging. If that were the case, President Yameen would have won in 2018. He had all the resources, all the power. All political leaders were in jail. However, the outcome was the opposite," said Nasheed.
56,164 people are eligible to vote in MDP's presidential primary. Referring to the current register, Nasheed said he would win a large majority of 56,000 votes. The President said that the elections would be won by staying on the right path instead of cheating.
