The Elections Commission of the Maldives (ECM) has revealed that no political party has been fined over invalid membership registrations due to the lack of a mechanism to verify the forms.
ECM has been stepping up efforts to reduce invalid and unverifiable party membership applications. As part of these efforts, the electoral body decided to issue fines of USD650 to political parties for each invalid party membership registration form submitted. However, it stated that the necessary mechanisms have not been established to implement the decision to hand out fines.
President of ECM Fuad Thaufeeq said the decision to postpone issuing fines was made after discussions with political parties. He said that the parties have also raised the issue of being unable to verify the membership registration forms themselves, as the documents are handled by individuals in various parts of the country before the party receives them.
As such, Fuad said the parties requested more opportunities to verify the forms instead of being liable for fines, and that they have assured that they would be more careful in verifying the forms before submitting them to the ECM. He added that fines would disproportionally affect some parties as only four parties receive state funding.
Additionally, Fuad said that the lack of a method to verify fingerprints is also a hindrance for the ECM, but noted that the changes made to the membership registration forms will reduce the number of invalid forms.