MDP elections committee accuses officials of fraud in primary

The elections committee of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has accused the officials who oversaw the party’s local council primary of electoral fraud.

Speaking to the press at MDP’s main office today, chair of the party’s elections council Ibrahim Waheed said that the issue has been communicated with the party’s relevant bodies and that they will not allow the accused officials to oversee future elections.

“Further, we noticed that people not on the lists had voted. There are cases of officials noting down people's details and allowing them to vote. We checked the voters who had been allowed to vote this way and we saw that four people not included in MDP’s registry were allowed to vote,” Waheed said, speaking of the Male’ City Council ballot, which was reported to have faced issues during the primary.

“We will not employ them in any further election related work. We have presented their issue to the relevant party bodies,” Rasheed said.

He said the council will decide by tomorrow whether the Male’ City Council ballot needs to be restaged.