The Parliamentary Group (PG) of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has submitted amendments to the regulations of the Parliament of the Maldives.
A total of five amendments were submitted by MDP PG Leader Mohamed Aslam. The most important amendments include giving authority to the secretary-general to appoint a parliamentarian to preside sittings if both the speaker and deputy speaker recuse themselves due to no-confidence motions. In such a case, the secretary-general will have to take into account the parliamentarians appointed to preside over the sittings in the absence of the speaker and deputy speaker. Aslam also proposed the amendment to grant authorisation for the secretary-general to decide on debate time in no-confidence motions against the speaker and set the response duration to 30 minutes.
MDP has proposed that the amendments should come into effect from the date of their passage. The amendments were submitted to allow the existing no-confidence motions seeking the removal of Speaker Mohamed Nasheed and Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla to proceed without re-filing. The amendments were also submitted to resolve the deadlock over the failure to reach an agreement among political parties over the reconstitution of committees in accordance with the recent changes to the composition of the parliament.