The Maldives ruling party  is seeking to delay the announcement of the official election results alleging fraud, the head of the election body said Wednesday.
“The Progressive Party of the Maldives has raised some concerns and asked the commission to delay the announcement of the official results,” Ahmed Shareef said.
“The commission has not decided yet on this. We can’t delay the announcement beyond the lawful deadline which is within seven days of the election. So that is Sunday.
“The commission has not been briefed on the nature of the complaints yet, but there are allegations of fraud from what I understand,” he told the Maldives Independent.
“We don’t know the nature of the complaints yet. But so far, all observers and political actors have said that the election went smoothly without any major problems. Right now, I do not see any complaint that would affect the outcome of the election, but we will have to see what the complain is.”
Abdulla Yameen, whose government presided over rights abuses and erosion of freedoms that triggered sanctions from the European Union and the threat of sanctions from the US, was ousted from power in last Sunday’s election.
He conceded defeat to his opponent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who won 38,484 more votes than him.
Earlier Wednesday opposition spokesman and lawmaker Ahmed Mahloof said there were credible reports that Yameen’s legal affairs minister was in the High Court trying to unlawfully annul the result.
The Maldivian people have suffered enough. We are not going to let Yameen and his cronies steal this election by annulling it. We will expose them and prosecute them. This is the time for people power.
— Ahmed Mahloof (@AhmedMahloof) September 26, 2018
Even before the provisional results were announced, Shareef said there were no complaints or irregularities that could affect the outcome.
According to election law, the official result must be announced within seven days. The period is for a verification process once all ballot boxes are sent back to EC headquarters in the capital.
There were about 262,000 eligible voters and 472 ballot boxes, including five in four overseas locations.
It was the third multi-party presidential election in the Maldives.
This is a developing story and will be updated.