Lawsuit filed against MDP, seeking to cancel chairperson election timeline

A case has been filed with the Civil Court against the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), seeking to cancel the timeline announced for the party’s chairpersonship election.

The case was filed by Abdulla Shaairu, an attorney-at-law.

Shaairu told Sun on Monday that he decided to file the lawsuit after the MDP secretariat failed to respond to a letter he sent on April 23 expressing concerns over the election.

Shaairu said that the MDP’s elections regulations require the party to respond to complaints within 48 hours.

But the party failed to provide a response 10 days past this deadline, he said.

“We aren’t asking for the election to be cancelled. But to cancel the current election timeline. Our actual complaint is that the timeline is wrong,” he said.

Shaairu said that while the Article 46 of the MDP Charter dictates that the power to organize and manage elections, including setting the timeline, vests with the president of the Appeals Judicial Council, this power is currently being executed by someone else.

Shaairu does not believe the election timeline can be set without any input from the president of the Appeals Judicial Council.

He said that the party’s Charter takes precedence over all other regulations.

“The Charter is the Constitution of the party. There cannot be any contradiction to the principle of supremacy of the Constitution. It’s the elections committee that should hold the election, once the president of the Appeals Judicial Council sets the timeline,” he said.

A representative from the MDP was not immediately available for comment regarding the case.

Shaairu, the owner of Advocatus Office, was part of the legal team that represented former President Mohamed Nasheed in the case against him over the detention of Judge Abdulla Mohamed.