EU: Praise deserved for all voting arrangements in the runoff

The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), on Monday, praised the Elections Commission (EC) for all voting arrangements made in the runoff round of 2023’s presidential election held last Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Chief Observer, Nacho Sánchez Amor, a member of the European Parliament from Spain, said EC had acted “professionally” in all stages, from preparations for voting till the voting counting.

“This was another very well-organized election day which our observers assessed positively. The credit goes to the election administration and its polling staff for the smooth running of the election,” he said.

During Monday’s press conference, Amor presented the preliminary findings of the EU EOM on Saturday’s runoff.

The mission had assessed the process in the round, from the re-registration of voters through to the casting of the vote and the compilation of results.

While political freedoms of candidates and supporters were largely respected, the mission stressed that reports of vote-buying were made against both sides, pointing to the need to improve transparency in campaign financing; a factor noted by the team in the preliminary findings in the first round as well.

The significant increase in the number of applications for voter re-registration for the run-off poll was observed, while the team praised EC for handling the process with great speed.

Additionally, the increased voter information activity and engagement with more political parties by EC was praised, citing it had achieved greater transparency and trust in their work. 

Although polling officials were observed by the mission to have worked professionally and efficiently, in accordance with procedures, from the opening, through polling, to the counting of votes – the overly strict instructions for determining invalid votes was expressed as a concern as it had increased the number of rejected ballots without taking into account the clearly expressed intent of the voters.

Similar to the first round, the mission observed state media’s preferential treatment to the President, blurring the boundaries between official functions and campaign activities while private TV channels were observed to have continued to exhibit bias according to their alignment with various parties.

The mission also stressed the rise in divisive discourse on social media, with X/Twitter and Meta platforms being the key platforms, where both genuine, as well as misleading information, was disseminated such as cases of dubious polls, accusations of ID card falsification in the context of re-registration, and religion-related narratives.

EU deployed 36 observers from EU member states as well as Canada, Norway and Switzerland who visited 119 polling stations in 56 islands, including in Male and 14 atolls across the Maldives for Saturday’s runoff.

The mission is set to return to Maldives next January with their final report.