The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) expresses its profound disappointment at today’s decision by the Supreme Court's to uphold the anti-defection legislation introduced and passed by President Muizzu's administration through its parliamentary majority. This deeply troubling ruling by the Supreme Court only serves to validate President Muizzu’s undemocratic overreach into the legislature, and undermine the independence of the Parliament.
This case and the proceedings demonstrate President Muizzu’s blatant interventions to circumvent constitutionally stipulated separation of powers. Starting with legislation to suppress the independent of elected Parliamentarians, and consolidated with direct interventions by the Executive to revise the composition of the Supreme Court bench.
The Supreme Court bench that delivered this ruling is not the bench before which the case was originally brought. Following executive interference in the composition of the Judicial Services Commission and revisions to the bench itself, hearings were suspended indefinitely, only to resume after a gap of one year, one month, and twenty-six days.
The revised bench then proceeded to rush through the proceedings to conclude within days. The final hearing, held on 14 April 2026, lasted approximately seven hours. Within that limited time, the Plaintiff and the Intervening Party were not afforded adequate opportunity to present their submissions — a concern that was raised by the parties during the hearing itself. Given the legal novelty and constitutional significance of the arguments advanced, the Plaintiff requested an additional hearing to present further submissions. That request was denied, without explanation.
While the MDP notes with appreciation that Justice Shujune's dissenting opinion directly and precisely engaged with the constitutional arguments placed before the Court, the majority opinion failed to meet the case on its own terms. The question before the Court was not whether anti-defection rules are desirable in principle, nor whether such mechanisms have merit in comparative constitutional law. The question was specific: whether this particular amendment violated the basic structure and foundational elements of the Constitution of the Maldives.
The majority opinion's departure from this core question is not a legal technicality. It is a failure to adjudicate the matter that was actually brought before the Court.
Furthermore, the majority opinion acknowledged that the entire purpose of the Sixth Amendment was its retrospective application to the incumbent People's Majlis — justified, in the State's own submissions, by the pressing need to address floor-crossing. Yet the same majority chose to set aside the State's concurrent position that Section 73 of the amendment cannot, in fact, be implemented at present, on the basis that the legislation required to give effect to the removal of sitting MPs from their parties has not yet been passed. This is a fundamental inconsistency: the State cannot simultaneously assert an urgent constitutional necessity that justified bypassing democratic process, while also acknowledging that the mechanism it rushed into law remains inoperable.
President Muizzu’s latest intervention to dismantle the Maldives democratic structures comes after the Government was handed a resounding defeat in the referendum held earlier this month where the Government lost its campaign to change the constitution to merge the Presidential and Parliamentary elections. This result, which is widely perceived as a reflection of the public’s disapproval of President Muizzu and his Government has not led to a reform of the Government but rather a doubling down by the Government of its suppression of the Maldives independent institutions.