Although Abdula Raheem Abdulla has vowed to increase the salary of Parliamentarians to MVR 150,000, ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM) Parliamentary Group leader Ahmed Nihan Hussain Manik says that he does not back it.

While Raheem, the deputy leader of PPM’s PG had vowed to increase the salary of lawmakers from MVR 85,000 to MVR 150,000 if elected as Parliament Speaker, RaajjeMV had on Saturday posed a question to PG leader Nihan if he would back the motion, to which he responded that he does not support increasing salaries for lawmakers.

Raheem last week announced that he will be vying for the seat of Speaker in Parliament, further promising a hefty salary increase if he were to get elected, as part of his manifesto.

Parliamentarians currently take home MVR 85,000, excluding a committee allowance of MVR 20,000.

This comes at a time a no confidence motion against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh has been proposed. Referring to the motion, Nihan said that Maseeh has his “full trust” and that Nihan believes Maseeh carries out his responsibilities the right way.

This is the fourth no confidence motion to be proposed against Speaker Maseeh, with the first three having been proposed in 2017. As such, 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.