Elections Commission has revealed that three political parties meet the membership requirement to receive funding from the state budget.
The electoral watchdog publicized the number of members registered to all political parties by the 31st December 2019.
According to the statistics, the three parties that will receive funding are main ruling Maldivian Democtratic Party (MDP) with 54101 members on its party registry, opposing Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) with 36078 members, and ruling coalition partner Jumhooree Party (JP) with 11072 registered members. According to the Political Party Act, a party must have a minimum of 10,000 registered members to qualify for funding.
The fourth largest party is Maldives Democratic Alliance (MDA) with 8506 members. While religiously conservative Adhaalath Party (AP) has 6789 registered members, opposing Peoples' National Congress (PNC) has 4221 members on their registry. Maldives Third-way Democrats (MTD) has 3279 members and Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) has 3033 members while Maldives Labour and Social and Democratic Party (MLSD) has 2977 members. The most recently registered Maldives Reform Movement (MRM) of former Maldives strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom had a disappointing 2851 members by December 31st, which is less than the 3000 members required to register a political party. None of these parties qualify for state funding.
Elections Commission said they are processing the membership forms submitted by political parties according to the required procedure. The commission entertains no bias in processing membership forms submitted by the parties, said EC. Membership forms submitted by three political parties are currently being processed by EC, said the commission.
