Voting procedures were designed to favor President Yameen’s opponents, says his lawyer
Saleem accused the Elections Commission of preparing the procedures to favor the opposition candidate
President Yameen\'s legal representative Mohamed Saleem enters the court
President Abdulla Yameen’s lawyer has said that the voting procedures in the presidential election were designed to favor his opponents.
Attorney Mohamed Saleem said this at the second Supreme Court hearing in the case to annul the election result held on Monday.
Saleem accused the Elections Commission of preparing the procedures to favor the opposition candidate and said that changing the National Complaints Bureau’s office to convention center Dharubaaruge was part of this plan.
He also questioned why M7 Print, a company with links to opposition members, was given the contract to print ballot papers without asking for the President’s approval.
Presiding Judge Dr. Ahmed Abdulla Didi asked the plaintiff when they came to find out about this. Attorney Saleem responded that they found this out after election day.
Saleem also said that, since M7 Print does not have an automatic auditing function, it could have printed more than the required amount of ballot papers without the knowledge of the police maintaining security and that 99% of the votes have lost their validity due to the lack of privacy of the voting booths.
Abbas Shareef, of President Yameen's legal team, leaves the Supreme Court
Saleem also said that they had been unable to confirm that the security cameras in the room where the ballot papers were stored had worked, and that the papers should have been kept under the custody of the police service. He also raised issue with the material for the ballot papers being bought from a Singaporean company, but did not go into detail.
Responding to these claims, attorney Hussain Shameem, who is representing the EC, said that while the plaintiff claims that President Yameen only found out about the ballot printing company after election day, the EC had announced details of it five days before the elections.
Shameem said that there had been no major complaints regarding privacy issues of voting booths and that anyone could have filed a complaint at the National Complaints Bureau at any time.
He also said that the Complaint Bureau office location was changed due to administrative issues.
Lastly, Shameem said that the EC’s security room was the same one used in the 2013 presidential election and that it is now too late to raise issues with it.
