PPM finds irregularities in 2,070 forms

Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has said that they have found irregularities in 2,070 out of 11,000 re-registration forms checked by the party.

Speaking at a press conference at Nasandhura Palace Hotel today, PPM presidential candidate’s agent Abdulla Ameen said that the problems found in the forms were the same as the reasons stated by the Elections Commission earlier for returning some forms.

“For the past three days, we have been allowed by the Elections Commission to check the forms. We made use of this opportunity, and a five-member team of our party has spent hours checking the forms. We were allowed to check 54,000 forms. Within the time given, we could check 11,000 random forms out of these 54,000 forms. We have found irregularities in 20 percent of the 11,000 forms,” he said.

Ameen said that problems found in the forms include address mismatches, expired identity cards, fingerprint issues, lacking signatures, lacking phone numbers, lacking witness signatures, and lacking witness information.

“We have found problems in 2,070 out of the 11,000 forms we checked,” he said.

He said that it could not be confirmed that the fingerprints on about 1,000 forms were in fact fingerprints.

Ameen said that these problems will be filed to the Elections Commission today, and that additional 6,000 forms have been filed to the commission for verification.

“Our work at the moment is aimed at making sure that the electoral registry used at the election scheduled for 9 November, is a valid registry. Today, we have sent a list containing information of 6,000 random individuals to the Elections Commission. We need to confirm the validity of this number of forms at least,” he said.

Ameen said that the purpose of filing these problems to the Elections Commission was to determine the number of forms that contained fraudulent fingerprints, and to assure the public that a fair election will be held on 9 November.