Vote Concept

I try not to write too much of Politics here, but just a thought that has been hammering my head all day. Today, I heard an MP say, “President is a post that is elected by voting and this voting is where the most number of votes goes to one single human being, who then is elected”.

However, in the case of Maldives, I totally disagree with the above fact based on the Presidential Elections 2008, or should I say “Rayyithunge Nimmun 2008”.

On the first round of the Elections, we saw the above concept being applied to former president, however, by constitution, the winning candidate should get more than 50% of the votes and therefore we went for a second round as the former president was not able to achieve this or neither was any other candidate.

With themes such as “Badhalakah Emmen” and “Wathan Edhey Gothah”, we all united to throw off the current regime. We vowed to bring a change, either out of desperation or frustration. And yes, we all did it with a very popular majority of votes. The credit of this success not only goes to His Excellency President Mohamed Nasheed, but also to all other candidates who partnered up with him for this change. It would be rude, if I do not happen to mention the biggest contributors for President Nasheed’s win, that would be Dr. Hassan Saeed and Mr. Gasim Ibrahim. Therefore, I would say together we all pulled out a dream come true to almost everyone on this little piece of land.

Therefore, when it comes to the above mentioned concept, I’d say it’s much appropriate to say that “President is a post that is elected by voting and this voting is where most number of votes that are casted against an opposition”.

We, who voted against the former president. We, who did not vote for one single individual. We, who voted for a change. We, who did not want our children to live the bureaucratic life our grandparents live. We, who believed in democracy and not single handed ruling. We, who wanted a change…a better change.