Unlike the current government, the opposition coalition’s presidential candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih will not steal in the name of progress, says former parliament speaker Abdulla Shahid.

He said this at the campaign ceremony held by the opposition coalition in B. Thulhaadhoo on Saturday night.

At the ceremony, Shahid said that Maldives now needs a leader that can bring people together and take the policies of all political parties into consideration and right the nation. He said that Solih is such a leader.

Criticizing the campaign of ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), Shahid said that PPM is only deceiving itself by changing the colors in the islands to the one representing the ruling party before travelling to the islands.

Shahid also condemned the government for inflating the price of development projects and said that the debt incurred from constructing the new Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital and the bridge will be placed on the Maldivian people.

He also said that each and every person who worked to get President Abdulla Yameen elected in 2013 is now in prison and that if he gets elected for a second term, everyone who helped him get elected in September’s polls will also be put in jail or punished in some way.

Concluding his speech, Shahid said that President Yameen will not be able to rig the election and that the opposition coalition has already won.