Reuters
The Maldives Supreme Court has dismissed the country’s top elections officials for failing to follow its guidelines during last year’s presidential polls and for disbanding eight political parties ahead of a parliamentary
election this month.
The court on Sunday ordered the head of the commission, Fuwad Thowfeek, and his deputy, Ahmed Fayaz, removed from their posts and asked the parliament to appoint replacements within six days. Thowfeek received a six-month jail sentence, suspended for three years.
The election commission came under the seven-member court’s scrutiny last year when it went ahead with a presidential run-off after three previous attempts were annulled or
postponed by the court.
Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected president who was ousted in February 2012, narrowly lost a November 16 run-off to the current president, Abdulla Yameen. Nasheed’s opposition coalition is challenging Yameen’s ruling coalition in a March 22 poll.
Last month the election commission disbanded eight political parties with less than 3,000 members in line with a parliamentary act passed last year, despite the Supreme Court asking it not to go forward with the move.
The court, which tried the two men and other members of the commission, last month, said it had determined that Thowfeek and Fayaz must bear responsibility for “disobeying and challenging” Supreme Court judgments and order, which were issued in its capacity as “the guardian of the constitution.”
It said the two officials had “lost the right and legal status to remain members of the
commission.”
Thowfeek confirmed the verdicts and said he did not know how their replacements would be appointed.
He told the private Minivan News website that he had been punished for discussing the “practical difficulties” of following court guidelines.
Thowfeek said he doubted whether the March 22 elections could take place as scheduled given the removal of the main organisers.
Nasheed, while campaigning in Haa Alif Dhidhoo island, criticised the Supreme Court’s judgments and called on
Maldivians to protest.
“This is the saddest day in the history of Maldives’ constitutional life. Gain courage from each other, come out and protest. If you stay quietly at home tonight, our children and our children’s children will not see a good future,” Nasheed said.
Eduard Kukan, the chief observer of the European Union’s election observation mission to the Maldives, said the Thowfeek-led election commission had played an important role in ensuring transparent, inclusive and credible electoral processes.
“The mission will study the verdict carefully, including the reasoning upon which the ruling was based,” Kukan said.
The Maldives, better known for its upmarket tourism, had been hit by political instability since Nasheed was forced to step down in February 2012 in what he says was a military-backed coup orchestrated by loyalists of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the former strongman who ruled the Indian Ocean archipelago for 30 years.
Gayoom appointed most of the current judiciary before being defeated by Nasheed in the islands’ first democratic polls in 2008 and foreign diplomats regarded the delays last year as a politically-motivated ploy to prevent Nasheed’s return to power.
