Comment: The importance of presidential candidates’ meeting

Meeting on Sunday night, former President Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), and his rivals, Abdulla Yameen of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and Gasim Ibrahim of the Jumhooree Party (JP), unanimously decided to approach the Election Commission (EC) for advancing the poll-dates. If their combined effort next morning when the met the EC officials did not fructify, it owed to the existing electoral scheme – or, so it would seem.

As may be recalled, the EC had fixed 9 November for the first-round and 16 November for the second-round of the once-annulled and once-cancelled polls. The tradition under the continuing constitutional scheme for decades now has been for the elected president to assume office on 11 November. With the second-round of polls, if required for the victor to possess the mandated 50-percent vote-support, scheduled for 16 November, questions have begun to be asked from the highest levels on the possibilities of an emerging constitutional vacuum.

In their meeting, the three candidates claimed to have worked out a scheme for verification of the voters’ list individually. Whatever that may be, they seemed desirous to let nothing – including the possibly an allegedly faulty voter-list – come in the way of completing the poll process. Claims of ‘faulty voter-list’ were among the causes for presidential polls, originally scheduled for 7 and 28 September, getting inordinately and at times inadvertently delayed.