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Can all
eligible Maldivians vote to elect the Speaker?
Shareef Dhonmanik 05/03/2005-People`s
Special Majlis is the Constitutional Assembly of the Maldives
which is convened to complete the task of emending the
Constitution of the Maldives. In late 2004, this Assembly had
been constituted by the President as provided by Article 94 of
the Constitution.
Since then, it has been
problematic for the Majlis to decide the manner, in which the
Speaker of the Assembly has to be elected, and the Majlis had
been occupied with a baseless argument which yet remains as an
intervention to its real business.
The Article 134 of the current
Constitutions says “A person shall be qualified to be a voter
in elections and public referendums stipulated in the
constitution and the law if he
(a)
is a Muslim
(b)
is a citizen of the
Maldives;
(c)
is a person who has attained
twenty-one years of age;
(d)
is of sound mind; and;
(e)
is not serving a sentence passed
by a court or is under lawful detention
Likewise, Article 133 of the
Constitution says” Voting in elections and public referendums
stipulated in the Constitution and the law shall be by secret
ballot”.
On one hand, if the Majlis
decides to cast a secret ballot to elect the Speaker with
consideration to the Article 133 of the Constitution,
meantime, it should consider the context of the Article 134,
and allow all eligible Maldivians to cast their ballots to
elect the Speaker.
On the other hand, if the Majlis
decides to cast the ballot either by a secret ballot or by a
show of hands upon the majority’s view by considering that the
Article 133 is not applicable in this matter; Article 134
should also be considered as irrelevant to the matter at hand.
If the issue was raised because of the verbatim repetition of
the phrase “in elections and public referendums stipulated
in the constitution” in both Articles, it needs to be
given an identical interpretation. Therefore, those who
believe that electing the Speaker of the Special Majlis shall
be by a secret ballot with respect to the Article 132, they
should also allow those who are qualified to vote, to cast
their votes in this election as provided by Article 134.
For the brief explanation above,
I would say that the Article 133 is not relevant to the matter
which the Majlis is engaged with. The word ‘election’ therein
is not referred to the election of Speaker of the Special
Majlis, but to the general elections alone.
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