The biggest danger Maldivian citizens have faced is incumbent President Abdulla Yameen’s affinity for changing laws to support his form of ‘tyranny’, MP Anara Naeem has said.

Speaking at a Joint Opposition rally held at Kunooz, the Jumhooree Party’s primary assembly site, MP Anara said that the Yameen administration has utterly centralized state powers.

The lawmaker said that frequent amendment to laws without direct participation of the general public, through influence in parliament, is detrimental and ‘not what Maldivians want’ of their government.

Adding that doing so has effectively oppressed the people, Anara said that Maldivians have a 2,500-year-old history of independence and such decisions are not well received.

 “To have one man’s word and decision be the norm or law, as opposed to the general public. Even historically, this is not how Maldivians have lived and governed themselves”, Anara said.

In reference to the ruling party’s campaign claim that voting for President Yameen will help preserve Islam in the Maldives, Anara said that Maldives has been a fully Muslim country for over 850 years ‘without Yameen’.