People’s National Congress (PNC) has announced the inaugural general meeting will be held on Sunday.
Speaking to PSM News, founder of PNC, Parliamentarian Abdul Raheem Abdulla revealed the inaugural general meeting will be held on Sunday at Dharubaaruge Convention Centre. He added the permission to hold the meeting was granted by Elections Commission of Maldives on Thursday.
The electoral body received heavy criticism as there was a significant delay in processing the membership forms and granting the permission to PNC. The new party submitted about 5,000 membership forms to the Elections Commission.
However, the commission declared most of the forms were invalid and requested PNC to submit more forms. PNC accused the electoral body was avoiding to register the party. It led to Speaker of Parliament Qasim Ibrahim to call members of the commission and request to speed up the process. Thereby, the commission granted the permission to PNC to hold the inaugural meeting of the party.
A new party needs to submit 3,000 valid membership forms and to hold an inaugural general meeting for the Elections Commission to register the political movement in the political party registry, according to the Political Party Act.