Parliament passes to repeal anti-defection act

The parliament on Thursday passed the motion to repeal the Anti-Defection Act.

The motion was passed with 37 MPs voting in favor, 17 against, and five abstaining.

The motion was proposed by Vilufushi MP Riyaz Rasheed, the deputy leader of Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM)’s parliamentary group.

The Anti-Defection Act states that a parliamentarian that loses membership of the party they were elected through will also lose their parliament seat.

The Anti-Defection Bill was proposed by the ruling party PPM’s parliamentary group leader Ahmed Nihan and was passed in March of this year.

The law was introduced when some members of PPM defected to the opposition and was back dated to affect MPs that defected from the party before its introduction, resulting in 12 MPs losing their seats.

The law was implemented at a time when the opposition coalition was preparing to submit an impeachment motion against pro-government speaker Abdulla Maseeh, but the parliament rejected the motion since the signatories had included the unseated MPs.

The opposition coalition earlier requested the Supreme Court to nullify the Anti-Defection Act, but the court ruled that the law was legally valid.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that the Anti-Defection Bill should have been passed at a parliament sitting with more than half of the members in attendance. However, noting it was passed with 39 members in attendance, which is less than the required 43, the apex court declared that the passing of the Anti-Defection Bill was still legally valid after accepting the state’s justification that it was passed in accordance with the Doctrine of Necessity.