The price of privilege: the cost of maintaining an ‘impotent’ legislature

Ninety-three MPs, MVR92 million a year and shrinking scrutiny.

Artwork: Dosain

1 hour ago

Every five years, like clockwork, the architecture of Maldivian democracy grows a little larger, a little more expensive, and markedly less effective.

Following the 2024 parliamentary election, the People’s Majlis expanded its ranks once again, ballooning to 93 seats – up from 87 in 2019, 85 in 2014, and 77 in 2009. This rapid numerical growth is mandated by an arithmetic formula tied to demographic shifts: under the current framework, a new parliamentary constituency is created for every additional 5,000 residents.

On paper, this sounds like pure, unadulterated representative democracy – ensuring that no citizen's voice is diluted as the population grows. In practice, however, it has turned our legislative branch into a sprawling, hyper-inflated bureaucracy that eats away millions from the national budget while delivering near-zero returns to the taxpayers who fund it.

We are paying a premium price for an increasingly impotent legislature.

The high price of a seat

To understand the sheer magnitude of this public burden, one only needs to look at the ledger.

A single Member of Parliament (MP) in the Maldives enjoys a monthly compensation package that sits far above the reality of the average citizen. Base salaries, living allowances, and committee compensation routinely push an MP's monthly remuneration to MVR82,500 (US$5,350) – a figure that occasionally faces aggressive, backroom attempts at being pushed even higher toward MVR100,000. Consider this: the average frontline civil servant or public school teacher earns a fraction of that in a year.

Beyond direct salaries, lawmakers are cushioned by VIP health insurance packages covering premier private hospitals at home and abroad, personal security details supplied by the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF), and an army of parliamentary administrative staff, committee secretaries and technical officers whose payrolls swell the annual Majlis secretariat budget to hundreds of millions of Rufiyaa.

And the meter does not stop ticking when an MP leaves office. Former parliamentarians are entitled to lifetime financial perks, including a monthly allowance of up to 30 per cent of a sitting MP’s salary for life, alongside lifetime VIP medical insurance. As the number of seats continues to compound with every election, this retirement tail-end alone threatens to become a fiscal sinkhole for generations of taxpayers.

Representation vs. rubber-stamping

What are Maldivians actually buying with this enormous outlay?

In theory, a legislature exists to perform three fundamental duties: craft thoughtful laws, hold the executive branch accountable, and rigorously debate how public money is spent.

In practice, the Majlis operates less like an independent pillar of statecraft and more like an extension of whichever political party holds a supermajority. Under successive administrations, the Majlis has routinely oscillated between two extreme, equally useless modes:

Total Executive Subjugation: When the ruling party holds a dominant majority, the Majlis dissolves into a high-priced rubber-stamping factory. Cabinet ministers face soft-ball questions, emergency floor debates on pressing economic crises are quietly shelved and critical oversight of public debt or infrastructure projects is discarded in favour of party discipline.

Hyper-Partisan Gridlock: When opposition alliances hold sway or political infighting erupts, parliamentary floor sessions break down into screaming matches, physical altercations, bell-ringing protests and boycotted committee meetings.

In neither scenario does the taxpayer win. When lawmakers act merely as voting machines for executive directives – or as partisan agitators stalling legislative work – the fundamental purpose of paying 93 individuals nearly a hundred thousand rufiyaa a month disappears. We are paying full price for a watchdog that refuses to bark.

The ratio anomaly

The absurdity of our expanding parliament becomes even clearer when viewed through a global lens.

The Maldives has a local population of around 400,000 to 500,000 citizens. With 93 MPs, the Maldives maintains a ratio of roughly one lawmaker for every 4,500 to 5,000 citizens.

To put that into perspective:

India: ~1 MP per 2.5 million citizens.

The United Kingdom: ~1 MP per 100,000 citizens.

The United States: ~1 House Representative per 760,000 citizens.

Even among small island developing states (SIDS), the Maldivian ratio is extraordinarily dense and economically unsustainable. If our current constitutional formula remains unchecked, demographic growth in urban hubs like Hulhumalé and Malé will continuously spawn new constituencies every election cycle, pushing the parliament past 100, 110 or 120 seats over the coming decades.

Can a small island nation facing high national debt, rising sea levels, housing shortages, and volatile import costs truly afford to keep adding political seats to its payroll ad infinitum?

Cap the seats, restore accountability

It is time to admit that our current legislative model is broken. Representation cannot be measured purely by the number of chairs inside the chamber; it must be judged by the quality of scrutiny, independence and integrity produced within it.

To save the People’s Majlis from complete institutional degradation – and to protect the national budget from unsustainable bloat – several urgent reforms must be put on the table:

Constitutional Cap on Majlis Seats: The 5,000-population automatic trigger must be repealed. Parliament should be capped at a fixed, manageable number of seats (for instance, 70 or 75), requiring constituency boundaries to be periodically redrawn rather than endlessly multiplied.

Performance-Linked Compensation: Committee allowances and perks should be tied strictly to tangible output, attendance and rigorous oversight metrics rather than blanket monthly hand-outs.

Trimming Post-Tenure Privileges: Lifetime financial allowances for ex-MPs who served brief terms must be scaled back or phased out entirely, bringing parliamentarians closer in line with the standard pension system applied to civil servants.

The Maldivian taxpayer is struggling under the weight of inflation, rising living costs, and housing insecurity. Asking the public to continue funding a growing, self-serving political class – while receiving little to no meaningful accountability in return – is no longer just bad fiscal policy. It is a fundamental betrayal of the democratic contract.

It is time to cap the seats, cut the bloat and demand a legislature that works for the people paying for it.

Mohamed Mamduh is a co-founder of Hotelier Maldives and presently Managing Editor at Maldives Wellness Review and Managing Partner at Maldives Wellness Promoters Pvt Ltd., a company that markets the Maldives for wellness travellers.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the Maldives Independent. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to editorial@maldivesindependent.com.

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The price of privilege: the cost of maintaining an ‘impotent’ legislature

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