President of the Maldives Broadcasting Commission (MBC), Mohamed Shaheeb has resigned.
Shaheeb forwarded his resignation to the President’s Office on Wednesday, resigning from his long term as president of the commission.
According to the Maldives Broadcasting Act, members will be removed from their posts once their forwarded resignations are received by the president.
Initially appointed to MBC in April 2011, Shaheeb took oath of office for membership for a second term in April 2016.
During his term as president, Shaheeb was known to be disparaging of media freedom and was heavily criticized for the gross violations of press freedom and the obvious bias targeted towards some media stations.
As such, private broadcaster Raajje Television had been unjustly fined numerous times over the past few years, the amount imposed reaches MVR 3.7 million, using the draconian anti-defamation law; which has since been repealed.
Shaheeb, in June this year, admitted that the law was used "to target a certain TV channel.”
