‘Nasheed should incorporate his political ideologies to a new party’

Opposition Coalition, composed of PPM and PNC, has stated that they have no intention of teaming up with MDP’s Leader, former President Mohamed Nasheed, and that the best way forward for him at the moment would be to take his political ideologies to one of the new political parties that are to be formed and work his way from there.

Speaking at a press conference held by the Opposition Coalition today, PPM’s Deputy Leader, Naifaru MP Ahmed Shiyam stated that the ideologies between MDP/Nasheed and PPM/former President Yameen Abdul Gayoom is as different as sky and earth.

“As far as I know, a lot of political parties are being formed at the moment. I think it would be the best for Nasheed to incorporate his political ideologies into one of those parties and move forward from there,” Shiyam had said.

He further detailed that the policies maintained by the leaders of MDP and PPM with respect to various matters including religion, independence, nationality and the economy are vastly different. Due to such discrepancies between the two, Shiyam sees no place for the opposition coalition to work with Nasheed.

However, Shiyam also added that Nasheed is welcome to believe in the ideologies of Yameen and PPM even if they do not reciprocate when it comes to Nasheed’s.

During the press conference, a question was posed by a journalist as to whether the opposition coalition would make a deal with Nasheed to work together to fee Yameen. In response to this, Shiyam stated that the opposition coalition does not make deals and they would only work on freeing Yameen through the judicial system.

Through text messages sent to a Whatsapp group of MDP, Nasheed had stated that he can no longer stand in political alignment with President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and also has hinted at his willingness to form a coalition with Yameen and PPM should they be open to moderate religious views.

Shiyam addressed this stating that the opposition coalition does not believe in moderate religious views – which is one of the aforesaid discrepancies mentioned before. He also noted that this is contrary to the views of the general public as well. He also added that there is no such thing as "moderate religious views" in the Islamic religion.