Tuesday's parliament session was an eventful one, despite concluding in about 15 minutes.
While a sitting was scheduled after three weeks- the last one was held on July 31, the same day there was a fire inside a bathroom at Parliament- security officers filled the chambers, to protect Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed.
The first news we got from the Parliament is that opposition MPs were not allowed to enter the chambers until 8:55 am, five minutes before the session was to start.
Some members chose to live stream, via Facebook, from the parliament floor as 'the Constitution states that Parliament sittings are to be transparent to the public'.
From these videos, we saw Speaker Abdulla Maseeh enter the chambers, surrounded by a number of security officer, and take a seat at his table.
Just as the session on 31st July, the security officers surrounded the area, and opposition members began to protest, calling on the Speaker to resign, and that he has no authority to sit at the Speaker's table.
All of a sudden, we hear an MP say "let's go upstairs"- this is when Maseeh concluded the today's sitting- and we see the camera following the Speaker. And then he vanishes, and we see the Galolhu-South constituency MP Ahmed Mahloof follow deputy speaker Moosa Manik.
He kept saying that Maseeh "should be ashamed" to sit in the Speaker's chair after a no-confidence motion against him has been submitted, with 45 signatures, calling on the deputy to hold the vote on the motion.
"Here is the vote, come and get it," Manik said, doing a rude gesture with his hands.
Afterwards, a number of opposition lawmakers spoke to media, and were giving live interviews outside the parliament building.
MP for North-Maafannu constituency Imthiyaz Fahmy's interview came after a few others.
As he was talking about how today's parliament had been unconstitutional, we see a handful of parliamentarians from the ruling coalition approach him. After yelling that MP Imthiyaz was lying, they left after a few minutes.
These members were; Kelaa constituency MP Ali Arif, Inguraidhoo constituency MP Ibrahim Falah, Hoarafushi constituency MP Mohamed Ismail, Feydhoo constituency MP Ibrahim Didi and Velidhoo constituency MP Yamin Rasheed. Some other members, including deputy speaker Manik, stood nearby, watching the whole thing go down.
We must commend MP Imthiyaz; who did not as much as flinch, as the five surrounded him in their feeble attempt to rile him up.
