The Department of Judicial Administration (DJA) has issued an urgent appeal to individuals interested in contesting the upcoming Maldives Media and Broadcasting Commission elections, urging them to submit their request for judicial record clearance at the earliest.
The Election Commission of Maldives (ECM) has set the election date for the new Media Commission for 11 October, with the application window closing at 2:00 PM next Saturday.
A critical requirement for all applicants is a clean criminal record. The DJA is currently working diligently with the courts to expedite the record clearance process. DJA has highlighted that the national criminal record portal is not yet fully populated, meaning courts must manually clear individual records. This process, the DJA warns, can be time-consuming, and applicants have been strongly advised to submit their requests well in advance of the deadline.
To ensure their records are processed in time, the DJA has specified that all requests for record clearance must be submitted by 1:00 PM this Thursday, adding that submissions made after this deadline may not be cleared by the ECM's stipulated cut-off date.
Interested parties can submit their requests through the department's dedicated portal at ‘records.judiciary.gov.mv’.
Four members will be elected to the seven-member Maldives Media and Broadcasting Commission, comprising two representatives from the broadcasting sector and two from other media fields. Candidates must be at least 30 years old and possess a first-degree in media or policy-making, or equivalent experience of five years in the field. However, media editors and officials are not eligible to apply for membership.