Speaker Maseeh's impeachment motion placed on the agenda

The parliament has placed speaker Abdulla Maseeh’s no-confidence motion on the agenda for November 8.

In a letter to the lawmakers on Wednesday, parliament’s secretary general Fathimath Niusha confirmed that they have received the impeachment motion signed by 51 MPs.

Parliamentary regulations dictate that the MPs and the speaker need to be notified of such a motion within three working days of its submission and that the motion needs to be placed in the agenda at the closest sitting scheduled on a working day, 10 days after the MPs and the speaker are notified.

No-confidence motions against speaker Maseeh were proposed at the parliament three times in 2017. The first motion proposed in March of last year had signatures of 26 MPs but failed after the parliament, citing an error in the voting system, counted the votes by asking the lawmakers individually.

The second motion was proposed with 31 signatures in the following April but was rejected after citing a recent amendment to the parliament regulation, which states that a no-confidence motion needs signatures from 42 MPs.

The third no-confidence motion in July was proposed with signatures of 45 MPs, which include lawmakers from the ruling party, but was rejected after the Elections Commission declared that some of the signatories have been removed from parliament for violating a floor-crossing ban.