Authorities attempts to halt main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)'s presidential primaries which began today at 02:00 p.m, has backfired.

Officers of the Maldives Police Service (MPS) Special Operations (SO) unit had 50 minutes since voting commenced, carried out it's attempts to halt the MDP primaries following an order issued by the Civil Court to halt the ballots which came right shortly after the Attorney General made a request for the court order.

The Elections Commission (EC) had also requested the MPS and Ministry of Home Affairs to interfere in the opposition primaries.

According to the temporary court order released with the signature of the court's chief judge Ali Abdulla, a convict such as former President Mohamed Nasheed being allowed to run for presidential primaries is illegal.

The court order was enforced and SO Officers barged into MDP campaign sites in capital city Male' as well as outlying islands, where polling stations were placed and started to remove ballot boxes mere minutes after voting commenced.

Video clips of Police officers snatching vote papers from residents in islands and tearing them into pieces, has since surfaced.

MDP members had triumphed over police attempts to halt primaries by initiating other means of casting votes as police began seizing ballot boxes from all around the nation and by 04:30 p.m, about 15,000 votes had been cast.

Campaign teams had walked from door-to-door with ballot boxes in some islands, collected votes in plastic bags, bins, hollow tins, ice boxes as well as cans, while also inventing innovatory methods for vote collection, as such, residents of Laamu Gan had used confiscation-proof items such as cement-mixer machines for polling. 

While this act by the authorities has been conspicuous on the horizon for a quite some time, authorities have since the announcement of Nasheed's candidacy in the party primaries, been calling it illegal, with threats of dissolution following soon after.

While many prominent figures have deemed police acts of hindrance in the polling stations earlier on Wednesday, the court order was initially issued to a "Maldives Democratic Party", making police's confiscation of MDP ballot boxes unlawful.

Party Chairperson Hassan Latheef had mentioned earlier that the party had not received any copies of said court order. 

Many have mocked the court's issuing of an order to halt the primaries of a party that does not even exist.