President Solih: MDP lawmakers never trusted Nasheed

Lawmakers from the main ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) never trusted Speaker Mohamed Nasheed, says President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

The Parliament is scheduled to hear a no-confidence motion against Nasheed – MDP’s second attempt to oust its former leader – next week.

The party’s parliamentary group has issued a three-line whip to vote in favor of the motion.

President Solih told Sun that the MDP’s parliamentary group resubmitted the no-confidence motion against Nasheed because they simply do not have any confidence in him.

“I believe the MDP will move forward with this,” he said.

During an event at the ADK Hospital earlier Wednesday, Nasheed joked about the motion against him.

“There’s trust one instance, and the next - it’s gone,” he said.

President Solih said that the MDP had to table its earlier no-confidence motion against Nasheed “because of the circumstances at the time.”

He said that he himself did not want to make a move that could create turmoil in the middle of the presidential election.

He said the move had been “temporary.”

“It was a temporary measure we took because we did not want to, at the time. It wasn’t because we had confidence [in Nasheed] at the time. Lawmakers weren’t happy at all with what he was doing. We planned on pushing this forward, even then,” he said.

The MDP had originally submitted no-confidence motions against both Nasheed and Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla earlier this year. The motion against Eva was submitted with the endorsement on 50 MPs in May, and the motion against Nasheed followed, with the endorsement of 54 MPs, in June.

But the MDP withdrew the motions in September, while the party was engaged in negotiations with the Democrats – the party to which both Nasheed and Eva belong – for the presidential runoff election.

The current motion against Nasheed was submitted with the endorsement of 49 MPs on October 9.

It will be heard at the Parliament on Sunday.

The MDP parliamentary group convened for a meeting on Wednesday, during which they passed a three-line whip to vote in favor of the motion.

The vote was unanimous.

The party’s lawmakers also agreed they would not carry out any other parliamentary work until a decision is made on the no-confidence motion.