MDP chairman opposes ranked choice voting electoral reforms

At a meeting with the People’s National Congress parliamentary group last Wednesday, President Dr Mohamed Muizzu asked the ruling party's supermajority to support a public referendum on constitutional amendments required for the changes. 

“Electoral reform should not be an excuse to limit the voices of voters. In a small nation like ours where votes are tallied in a day, the president-elect should be sworn in with a clear mandate from the majority of the voting population,” MDP Chairman Fayyaz Ismail tweeted on Sunday, defending the current system where a second round or run-off between the top two contenders is called if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.  

“The government’s justification of such a policy through ‘cutting costs’ is insincere when wasteful political expenditure is at an all time high,” he added.

Fayyaz characterised the current practice of staggered presidential and parliamentary elections held months apart as “a necessary feature of our constitution; to merge the two will limit the parliament’s ability to serve as a check to the administration.”

Earlier in the day, former president Mohamed Nasheed – who recently proposed a reunification between the MDP and The Democrats party formed by his loyalists – backed the electoral reforms “if it is with a preferential vote”.

Over the weekend, political appointees and government supporters launched a social media campaign to promote preferential or ranked choice voting, where candidates are ranked by order of preference. If no candidate wins a clear majority in the first-preference votes, candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the voters’ next preference in a process that continues until one candidate emerges with more than 50 percent. 

"The type of voting system that I have been advocating for is the Preferential Voting system," President Muizzu wrote on his new public WhatsApp group last night.  

Following the lunch meeting with the president last week, a PNC MP told Dhauru that the plan was to hold a public referendum this year.

Other constitutional and legal changes under consideration include abolishing atoll councils, reducing the number of councillors from five to three for populations under 500, and reverting the start of the presidential term to November 11. 

While MDP Chairman Fayyaz opposed rank choice voting and holding the presidential and parliamentary elections on the same day, he favoured merging the presidential and local council elections. “Aligning the visions of local and central development will allow for better execution of developmental agendas,” he suggested.