1 October 2018
Update:
Election commission has now confirmed that Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is the winning candidate for the presidential election 2018.
28 September 2018’
Outgoing president Yameen’s party which was defeated decisively in the recent presidential elections, has asked the Election Commissioner to hold back the announcement of the election results. The commission will have to announce the results latest by Sunday. The commissioner believes that the party’s complaints will be on grounds of voting irregularities. The commissioner also said that there were no grounds for him to delay the announcement of the official results. The commissioner is believed to be a key ally of Yameen. Elections Commission appointed 107 activists and members of President Yameen’s ruling party, to administer the voting, vote counting, and complaints procedures on election day. How can the ruling party now claim that the election was rigged?
The Elections Commission named journalists from The Wire, The Economic Times, The Hindu, and WION as “international observers.” But, those journalists have said that their visas to travel to the Maldives have either been denied, or not issued. Journalists from AFP, Reuters, The Economist, All India Radio, and ARD have all been denied visas. Election Commission wanted to hide something that is why they did not allow independent observers.
Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed alleged that Yameen attempted for a coup on Wednesday evening by annulling the presidential election results. Senior opposition officials had alleged that the ruling party had now filed a case with the country’s High Court seeking to annul the elections. Avas news reported. Ever willing judiciary handsomely bribed with houses and bags of cash by Yameen, would try to keep him in power. If the armed forces and police do not cooperate, it is unlikely that it will succeed in the enforcement of its decision.
Shortly after his shock defeat, Yameen freed five prisoners who were arrested prior to the election. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, his estranged half-brother and former president has not been released from prison.
Rumours flooded the social media that Yameen could file an election petition seeking the delay of the announcement and the delay in the swearing in of the new president. Military chief Major General Ahmed Shiyam appeared on a private TV channel on Wednesday night and said, “The people have spoken, I want to assure the Maldivian people that the military will protect the will of the people.” Channel News Asia reported.
Transparency Maldives, an election monitoring group, said it was “concerned” by Nihan’s “allegations of systematic and planned irregularities” in the vote.
Election results have been contested in the Maldives previously. In 2013, the Supreme Court annulled results of a first round of polling in which Yameen came second. The court also cancelled and delayed the rescheduled polling several times, citing irregularities in the vote. It would now appear that Yameen came to power by some jugglery and not by popular vote, in the 2013 elections. He is now trying to repeat his previous feat.
The Maldivian opposition consisting of four parties appealed to the international community Thursday requesting help for a peaceful transfer of power amid fears that Abdulla Yameen may cling onto power despite his decisive election defeat.
The Maldives’ President-elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend his oath-taking ceremony to be held in November.
KRyS Global, a forensic accounting firm with global offices and experience in fraud investigation, reported corruption within President Yameen’s government based on the forensic review and analysis of 80,890 messages taken from the phone of Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Ghafoor. They also found evidence that Abdulla Yameen, Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Ghafoor, Colonel Ahmed Fayaz, Mohamed Hussain Shareef and Azeema Adam were responsible for a scheme to use the Maldives to launder USD 1.5 billion from Indonesia and Singapore.
Asela Wickramasinghe, Yameen’s black magician tweeted today: “According to Prez Yameen Horoscope he will go to jail more than 10 years. It’s very very (sic) bad time only one solution is there to come out from that. If it happen (sic) his political career will end”.
Why did he not post the tweet before the election results were announced? He has been cheating Yameen for years.
