Pres. Yameen’s orders: vote must go on, take action if necessary!

President Abdullah Yameen’s instructions on the no-confidence vote on Parliament Speaker Abdullah Maseeh have surfaced, following leaks of the chat thread of the PPM Parliamentary Group's conversation on Viber.

The screenshots show instructions coming in from the President at the time the Parliament session was on going on Monday. Monday’s voting was carried out by a roll call method, instead of the electronic system of voting.

One screenshot shows the President instructing the PG Members at 1306hrs on the wordings to be used at the voting, which was scheduled for 1330hrs. MPs were instructed to use the word “against” when voting.

This was followed by another message at 1309 by the President, ordering the MPs not to use another word or a variation of the word. The message added that this should be done in order to not give room for other MPs to raise issues.

A subsequent message at 1351hrs, instructed the MPs that voting must be held during this session and if necessary to take action against opposition MPs. During that time, opposition MPs had begun their protest against the proposed roll call method for the day’s voting.

At 1358hrs, President Yameen had ordered MPs to push ahead with the vote and not to allow the vote to be postponed.

PPM MPs had acted according to the instruction, with many MPs chiming in “Yes Sir” to the instructions.

The Parliament on Monday had voted to keep Speaker Maseeh in his position, after forcibly removing 13 MPs from the Parliament floor. All opposition MPs had walked out of the session, after the 13 MPs were removed. Out of the 73 MPs entitled to vote on Monday, only 46 MPs had voted.