'Not new observations': abuse of state resources, a one-sided broadcaster and normalised vote-buying

All three are among key findings in a review of the 4 April polls released by Transparency Maldives on Wednesday. The organisation says none of it is new. 

“We have raised versions of them in previous cycles. The fact that they persist is not a reason to stop raising them. If anything, it is the reason we must,” Executive Director Aishath Rizna wrote in the foreword. 

TM, which observed the cycle through media monitoring, interviews and documentary review as well as long-term and short-term observation between 8 February and 22 April 2026, assessed the election as administratively competent. But it was conducted "within a legal framework that fell short of international standards on several structural dimensions and against a campaign environment in which the advantages of incumbency – state resources, the state broadcaster and the absence of any campaign-finance accountability – were not effectively constrained," the report concluded.

Measured against the Model Commitments for Advancing Genuine and Credible Elections – issued in 2024 by International IDEA, the Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute, International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Kofi Annan Foundation – the cycle met no engaged commitment outright. Most were partially met. Five fell short: governmental neutrality, freedom of movement as engaged by overseas voting, campaign-finance transparency, the right to electoral information, and the participation of persons with disabilities. 

The country’s fifth local council elections, Women's Development Committee elections and a constitutional referendum on concurrent presidential and parliamentary elections all took place on a single day. The report described it as the most operationally complex electoral day since the introduction of multiparty democracy in 2008. Turnout was 74.98 per cent, above the 65–70 per cent range of the four preceding local council cycles. 

By a margin of more than two to one, the referendum delivered a decisive mid-term rebuke to President Dr Mohamed Muizzu's government. The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party swept all five cities and took council majorities across most of the country.

Eighty-two of the 1,356 council and WDC positions (6.1 per cent) were filled before polling day without a vote as candidates ran unopposed in those constituencies. Sixty-nine of those 82 (84 per cent) went to the ruling People's National Congress. Restricted to seats decided by voters, the MDP led the PNC 557 to 515. TM offered two explanations it says its evidence cannot independently establish: that the PNC fielded candidates in seats other parties left uncontested, or that factors at the candidacy stage shaped the final composition of candidate fields.

Abuse of state resources was a major theme in Transparency’s 2023 presidential election observation report. TM said it continued to observe the same in the 2024 parliamentary elections. 

State resources, vehicles, equipment or personnel from government or state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were documented at 28 of 118 observed campaign events (24 per cent). They appeared at PNC-organised events at about two and a half times the rate seen at MDP events (30 per cent versus 12 per cent) and were not recorded at any Maldives Development Alliance event. 

Applying the IFES framework for state-resource abuse, observers logged 130 themed observations across 86 cases, the most heavily documented pattern in the report. This included 30 observations of SOE hiring made without prior public notice and 14 observations of pressure on public-sector employees to attend campaign events.

The report's lead case study was the Housing Development Corporation, where an MDP candidate documented delayed signage approval while PNC candidates were fast-tracked. HDC staff were separately observed removing MDP campaign material during early-morning hours.

Across 118 observed campaign events, no instance of hate speech, derogatory language, or religion-based incitement was recorded and no obstruction by security forces was documented at any event. The single inter-party physical altercation, in Faafu Magoodhoo on 1 March, was the only such incident recorded across the 56-day observation period spanning 16 atolls.

TM monitored all 589 articles published on the Public Service Media's website over a 72-day window. Content originating with or amplifying the executive made up 68.9 per cent of that output. Only six articles fell under the Accountability category and just one of those was genuinely adversarial. The daily rate of project-related coverage rose 5.8 times between the pre-campaign period and the final fortnight before polling, then dropped below baseline after election day. 

On the referendum, of 36 articles published during the legally protected campaign window, 11 were coded pro-Yes and none substantively pro-No. TM found this pattern inconsistent with PSM's own statutory duties of neutrality and equal opportunity, as well as broader electoral-law and international standards on public-broadcaster conduct during referendums.

Section 20(b) of the Local Council Elections Act excludes local council and WDC elections from four accountability provisions that apply to other elections under the General Elections Act: the financial-responsibility obligation, the dedicated campaign bank-account requirement, the financial-disclosure obligation and the official election-agent requirement. No candidate was required to maintain a campaign account, appoint an agent, or disclose income or spending. 

The Public Referendum Act and its regulation contain no campaign-finance provisions of any kind, no spending limits, disclosure obligations, donation restrictions, or account requirements.

TM's long-term observation programme recorded 76 themed observations on money in politics across 28 substantive cases. Reported per-vote amounts ranged from MVR1,000 to MVR50,000, clustering between MVR3,000 and MVR10,000, with offers documented across party lines. SOE jobs recurred as a parallel currency alongside cash. 

The Anti-Corruption Commission's bribery mandate under section 74 of the General Elections Act applies to local elections but is complaint-driven. Without a disclosure requirement, TM noted there is no spending record for the ACC to examine in the absence of a specific complaint. TM categorised both gaps as legislative, suggesting the remedy lies with parliament reinstating the stripped provisions for local elections and creating a campaign-finance framework for referendums where none currently exists.

The report carries forward six shortcomings first identified in TM's pre-election legal review released on 29 March, which was updated based on post-polling evidence. These included a one-sided official voter-information paper for the referendum (a legislative gap, since the presidential-decree pathway used to produce it requires only the pro-amendment case), an insufficient remedy window for voters whose ballot secrecy was put at risk during polling (an administrative shortcoming), the two campaign-finance gaps described, a referendum question the report assesses as lacking the clarity required for informed consent and the exclusion of overseas voters from the referendum.

Separately, the report documented 12 broader structural concerns in the legal framework, including the absence of any turnout threshold for validating a referendum result and the use of a presidential decree to alter a constituency's composition.

The Elections Commission set the threshold for placing an overseas ballot box at a minimum of 2,000 registered voters per country, with at least 40 from one constituency, on 10 February 2026, six days before the referendum was added to the ballot.

The EC subsequently opened a re-registration window specifically in response to the referendum's addition but did not revise the threshold. Neither Malaysia with 499 re-registrants nor Sri Lanka with 186 met this. No overseas boxes were placed for the referendum, the country's first one since 2007. Under the 150-voter threshold used in the 2020/2021 and 2024 cycles, both countries would have qualified. The 2,000-voter threshold has been met only once in Maldivian electoral history, by Malaysia in the 2023 presidential election run-off. When the MDP raised the issue on 19 March, the EC stated in writing that "matters have now been finalised." TM categorised this as an administrative shortcoming. The commission had discretion to revise the threshold once the nature of the ballot changed but did not exercise it.

In late December 2025, a presidential decree directed that the 588 registered residents of Haa Dhaalu Hirimaradhoo be treated as voting for the Haa Dhaalu Hanimaadhoo island council rather than their own. The decree removed Hirimaradhoo from the national list of inhabited islands, conditional on the government announcing completed resettlement. The condition was not met at the time of polling. The housing project was suspended by a court. The Elections Commission published the voter registry with the reassignment incorporated.

But two other islands designated for resettlement, Meemu Raiymandhoo and Vaavu Rakeedhoo, retained their own council elections. Both have smaller populations than Hirimaradhoo, which undercuts a population-based rationale for the differential treatment, TM noted. No published criteria or statutory mechanism explain the distinction. The report flagged this as a structural concern. Left unaddressed, it would give future governments a mechanism to alter local electoral geography by decree, without legislative process or independent verification of stated conditions.

In TM's terms, the 33 per cent gender reservation for council seats under Section 56-5 of the Decentralisation Act operated as a floor rather than a target. Of 1,575 nominated council candidates, 547 (34.7 per cent) were women, of which 510 (93.2 per cent) stood for reserved seats where only women may be nominated, leaving 37 women (3.5 per cent of the 1,065-candidate unreserved pool) contesting open seats. No women stood among the 14 mayoral candidates.

WDC candidate supply averaged about 2.0 candidates per seat. Supply fell short of even that floor at Raiymandhoo and Rakeedhoo where five WDC positions, all reserved for women, went unfilled.

At observed campaign events, women's roles were recorded as predominantly supportive and ceremonial, with speaking roles recorded at roughly 12 per cent of events, most often a WDC candidate speaking on her own slate rather than a council candidate.

TM also identified four structural gaps against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), affecting an estimated 4.5 per cent of the electorate, a figure confirmed in a joint statement by TM and disability-rights organisations and consistent with the CRPD Committee's August 2025 Concluding Observations on the Maldives. 

There was no statutory requirement for physical accessibility such as ramps, step-free access, minimum door widths, at polling stations. There was no provision for accessible voter information in formats such as sign-language interpretation, audio, or easy-read materials. Assisted-voting eligibility was defined only by physical incapacity, with no equivalent provision for cognitive or intellectual disabilities and no framework provisions addressing accessibility under the concurrent-voting conditions the cycle presented.

The High Court registry recorded 20 dispute filings between 17 and 30 April, all directed against the Elections Commission. Sixteen were declined at the intake stage, including all 13 lodged by the MDP. The four accepted were individual candidate petitions, resolved in three judgments concerning council contests in Meemu Veyvah, Dhaal Meedhoo and Thaa Thimarafushi.

The registry record shows intake status only and does not disclose why each filing was declined. TM recorded the pattern without attributing a ground to it. None of the three judgments annulled a contest. Section 65(a) of the General Elections Act permits annulment only where improper influence, bribery or unlawful conduct materially affected the result. But in two the narrower relief granted changed the outcome anyway. Three ballots invalidated in Veyvah gave the member seat to Muhammad Nazeeh of the PNC by 119 votes to 118. A reinstated ballot in Meedhoo produced a 392-vote tie for the council president seat, sending it to a second round. 

PNC's Suha Ibrahim won the Meedhoo council presidency with 529 votes against MDA's Mohamed Shahid's 449, giving PNC a clean sweep of all council seats in Meedhoo. In Veyvah, MDP candidate Aushan Naeem reclaimed the council seat after the Supreme Court overturned the High Court ruling that had invalidated three votes cast in his favour. Aushan had originally won the election with 121 votes against 119 for ruling party candidate Mohamed Nazeeh. However, the High Court later annulled three ballots cast for Aushan after Nazeeh challenged them, arguing that small dots on the ballots could compromise the secrecy of the vote. The Supreme Court ruled that the High Court’s decision was unlawful, finding that it had relied on photographs of the ballots submitted by Nazeeh and had ordered a remedy that was not sought in the case. Nazeeh had asked the court to invalidate the election and order a fresh vote, not to deduct votes from Aushan’s total. With the Supreme Court quashing the High Court ruling, Aushan was once again recognised as the winner of the election.