Given that three leaders of the Joint Opposition are currently sentenced to prison and thus are ineligible to contest the upcoming elections, Maldives should elect an interim leader, says former Attorney General Dhiyana Saeed.

She said this in a tweet on Sunday, where the former attorney general also said that said interim leader should be someone who holds elections to elect a president.

Dhiyana, also former secretary-general of SAARC, said that electing a president for a five-year term while opposition leader former president Mohamed Nasheed, Qasim Ibrahim, and Sheikh Imran Abdulla cannot compete would be unfair.

Dhiyana’s tweet translates to ‘with president Nasheed, honourable Qasim, and Sheikh Imran having been illegally made ineligible to contest, electing a president for a five-year term is not just, and such an election would not be free or fair. First, we must first elect an interim leader who will hold elections’.

These sentiments coincide with the Elections Commission saying last week that it would not allow Nasheed to contest the elections, and that it is working to penalize the Maldivian Democratic Party for allowing him to compete in the party primary. Both Qasim and Imran have also been sentenced to jail terms, with the former currently residing abroad.