Voting has begun in Maldives Democratic Party MDP's internal election which will see it fill major party roles including the new chairperson.
Voting started at 9 am today and some of the party members had queued up at some of the polling centers around 7 am today in the Greater Male' Area.
MDP had placed a total of 194 ballot boxes for the internal elections in the Atolls and the greater Male' Area. It had confirmed that 87 out of the boxes would be placed in Male' area, mostly in schools.
A total of 94,211 MDP members are eligible to cast their vote to elect a chairperson while 41,027 members are eligible to vote for the president of the women's wing and 32,057 are eligible to vote to elect a new youth win president.
The run-up to the election has been highly tense with factions seemingly formed within the party. This was mostly after it was announced that Economic Minister Fayyaz Ismail and MP for Maafanu Uthuru Constituency Imthiyaz Fahmy would be competing for the coveted chairperson role.
While most of the MDP cabinet members have banded after Fayyaz, MDP old guards like the Speaker of the Parliament Mohamed Nasheed and his Vice Speaker Eva Abdullah had supported Imthiyaz.
