Dhangethi MP Ilham Ahmed quit ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) on Sunday as the ruling party crisis deepened. MP Ilham sent a letter to PPM secretary general Abdulla Haleel expressing his wish to leave the party.
In the letter to PPM, MP Ilham stated that he is resigning the ruling party to serve the people and requested for the removal of his name from PPM’s registry.
The Dhangethi lawmaker also noted that PPM was a political party that understood the feelings of the people and ensured them their rights in accordance to the Constitution and wished to see a day where PPM followed its origins.
Ilham had recently resigned from his post of deputy parliamentary group leader of ruling party and chair of the parliament’s Economic Affairs Committee.
He is the third of PPM’s lawmakers to resign after government lost its control in parliament after the opposition garnered the signatures of 45 lawmakers to file a fresh censure motion to unseat the parliament speaker Abdulla Maseeh.
Dhihdhoo lawmaker Abdul Latheef Mohamed and Hanimaadhoo lawmaker Hussain Shahudhee also left the ruling party last week.
All three lawmakers are among the ten lawmakers of PPM to sign the opposition led censure motion to unseat the speaker.
After the now opposition coalition in March had filed a second motion to unseat speaker Abdulla Maseeh, the government had engineered an amendment to the parliament rules of procedure raising the number of lawmaker signatures required to file a censure motion against the speaker and his deputy from 15 to 42.
The opposition had filed the third censure motion against Maseeh with 45 lawmakers which included ten lawmakers from the ruling party.
PHOTO : AFSHEEN NASEER | AVAS
