The parliament committee formed to amend the parliament regulations has passed to increase the debating duration given to parliamentarians to 4 hours.
Initially, 3 hours were provided for the debate on bills and members were given duration in accordance with the membership distribution in the parliament floor. In this regard, if members representing a party are more, the respective members get more time for debate, while members from smaller parties and independent members get a smaller duration to debate. It has been noted sometimes independent members get only 30 seconds to debate.
While the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has secured a supermajority in the parliament, the parliamentarians from other parties will be provided with a very small duration if the previous regulation was followed. The newly elected Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Nasheed has therefore revealed plans to provide duration for members in uniformity.
The 11-member committee formed to amend the parliament regulations has passed to provide all members with the same duration in the debate process. In this regard, each parliamentarian will receive up to 2 minutes for each debate. The committee also passed to distribute an hour equally among all parties. The 11-member committee consists of Parliamentarians Adam Shareef, Abdulla Riyaz, Ahmed Amir, Saud Hussain, Hassan Latheef, Rozaina Adam, Ilyas Labeeb, Ibrahim Shareef, Moosa Siraj, Ahmed Shiyam and Abdul Ghafoor Moosa.
The current parliament regulations came into effect in 2010. Since then, parliamentarians have called for reform, to facilitate equal opportunities for all parties represented in the parliament.