Local Politics: Parliamentary Elections Held And Government Coalition Lost Some Seats Due To Greed

23 March 2014: Maldives held parliamentary elections on Saturday and preliminary results show a clear majority for ruling party's coalition. The sole opposition party, Maldivian Democratic Party, got 24 seats. From the remaining 61 seats the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives got 34, Jumhooree Party 15 seats, Maldives Development Alliance 6, Adhaalath Party got only 1 and individual candidates secured 5 seats. The individual candidates are believed to be supporting the ruling PPM, media reports say that some candidates will be joining PPM soon. The results show a clear victory for PPM coalition.



Honourable Gasim Ibrahim, the leader of JP and prominent business tycoon, said some seats were lost due to internal issues with the coalition. Gasim was referring to the fact that some constituencies had multiple candidates from coalition and votes eventually got divided among the coalition candidates, making opposition candidate the winner. But, prior to election, Adhaalath Party tried to negotiate with JP to get a fair share from the coalition and JP ignored the requests, ultimately Adhaalath decided to contest freely as a single party.



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