JP rejects election results, decides to go to court

Presidential candidate for Jumhoory Party Gasim Ibrahim has decided to reject the presidential election results and contest the matter in court.

Speaking at a post-election press conference today, Gasim stated that they have come across a number of issues regarding yesterday's polling and that they will not submit “just one or two issues” to the court.

Jumhoory Party candidate Gasim Ibrahim ended up in third place with 24.07 percent, close behind Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) candidate Abdulla Yameen who received 25.35 percent. Having secured second place, Yameen is set to compete with Maldivian Democratic Party candidate Mohamed Nasheed in the run-off.

Gasim said today that he does not accept the election results that the believes he should have rightfully received the most amount of votes in the Saturday poll.

“We, by no means, accept the current results. Because, well, that’s why we’re going to court,” Gasim said.

Speaking at the press conference today. Gasim’s running mate Dr. Hassan Saeed said that their court case will include issues of names of voters being repeated, in addition to the names of the deceased being included in the electoral register.

“There were cases of a single person’s name being repeated, [listed] more than once. Some people were marked as having voted by the time they actually go to vote. There were cases of names of deceased people being included [in the register]. There were cases where the names of children, younger than 18 years of age, having been included,” Dr. Saeed said.

He said that they have decided to ask the court to obtain and compare the electoral register and the number of people who voted, as they suspect that the number of ballots cast exceeds the amount of registered voters. He said that they have already asked the Elections Commission to provide them the documents, and regardless of whether the commission provides the documents. they already have evidence of such issues.

“We have evidence even now, of the names of the deceased having been included, of names having been repeated, inconsistencies between number of voters and the voters registry. You can see this from the elections website, even right now. So the elections process is questionable,” Dr. Saeed said.

Dr. Hassan Saeed said that they will file the case in court tomorrow and that the issues to be contested will be completely determined by tonight.