JP chief says whoever they support will win upcoming elections

Dr. Hussain Rasheed Hassan, interim leader of the opposition Jumhooree Party, said while speaking at party event on Friday night that whoever they support in the upcoming elections will win.

Hassan said, while speaking at this event to celebrate the party’s 10th anniversary, that they have made a lot of compromises to survive and thrive as a party.

He said that the long history of the party and its significance to local society, with its founder Qasim Ibrahim being often described as a charitable man and believed by many to be the ‘richest man in Maldives’, has distinguished them in Maldives’ political sphere.

Expressing support for the Joint Opposition, which comprises of itself, two other parties, and a faction of the split ruling party, Hassan said that the judicial and government reforms they demand are crucial for Maldives’ development and thus a unified government, as it has pledged in its manifesto, is essential.

Further, lamenting Maldives’ backtracking on democratic gains, Hassan said that the Jumhooree Party will do all it can possibly do to win the elections.

While such broad coalition governments established after the presidential elections of 2008 and 2013, respectively, Qasim’s endorsement of presidential candidates in said years, former president Mohamed Nasheed and incumbent president Abdulla Yameen, had played a role in their wins.

The party leader’s endorsement of President Yameen was pivotal in the second round run-offs of the 2013 elections.