The Democrats have decided to refrain from supporting either of the Presidential Candidates in the run-off of the Presidential Election set for later this month.
In a statement, the party said that it made the decision not to back either of the candidates as both the PNC/PPM coalition and MDP did not agree to the conditions the party proposed within the deadline it had set in its last interim council meeting.
The party's interim council passed a resolution at its meeting held earlier this week which gave an ultimatum to both competing parties to make their decisions before the 20th of this month.
The resolution was proposed by temporary council member Mohamed Shifaz in which he included two conditions for the two opposing parties. The condition for MDP stated that the party must hold a public referendum on the governance system on the 28th of this month while for PNC, the condition was to sign a coalition agreement which specifies how much involvement the democrats would be given in their coalition government and its policies.
The resolution stated that if neither party agreed to the conditions proposed to them before this Wednesday, the Democrats would remain neutral for the run-off.
While the resolution was then put to a debate, the democrats council members present at the meeting last night passed it with 50 out of the 64 members present supporting the proposal.
PNC Presidential Candidate Dr. Mohamed Muizzu and MDP Presidential Candidate President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih claimed the first two spots of the Presidential Election first round but must now compete in a run-off as no candidate secured 50 percent of the votes.
Previous election run-offs have been decided by coalitions made by competing candidates and this time around most of the candidates who contested in the first round have decided to remain neutral for the run-off.
This includes JP Candidate Qasim Ibrahim, Democrats Candidate Ilyas Labeeb, and Independent Candidate Faris Maumoon. Umar Naseer, who received more votes than JP and MNP in the first round is set to announce his decision later tonight.
MNP and its candidate Mohamed Nazim have joined hands with PNC Candidate Muizzu.
