Parliament sitting and key committee meetings cancelled

The Parliament on Wednesday cancelled its sitting, as well as two key committee meetings.

At around 08:30 am, the Parliament’s Secretariat announced that the Security Services Committee was scheduled to convene for a meeting at 10:30 am, and the Public Accounts Committee at 11:15 am.

But shortly after Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim announced the cancellation of the sitting due to lack of quorum, the Parliament’s Secretariat announced the cancellation of both meetings as well.

The Security Services Committee and the Public Accounts Committee are key parliamentary committees with the heaviest workload.

The Public Accounts Committee is currently looking into a number of issues, including the failure to audit the Male’ City Council over the last 10 years, delays by state institutions and councils in publicizing audit reports, and failure to address issues highlighted in audit reports.

The cancellations came after Deputy Speaker Nazim was kicked out of a WhatsApp group for parliamentarians from the ruling People’s National Congress (PNC).

Only Nazim and six parliamentarians from the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) showed up for Wednesday’s sitting, which was scheduled to start at 09:00 am.

Nazim gave an hour to see if enough parliamentarians showed up to meet the quorum, before giving up and postponing the sitting to Thursday.

The Parliament’s standing orders sets the quorum for sittings as 25 percent of the Parliament. The quorum for the current 93-member assembly is 23 parliamentarians. Sittings can only start if there are at least 23 parliamentarians present.

The Parliament had held only 18 sittings during the current session, which was set to conclude on Thursday.