Fayyaz: Can win the second round with the votes of those who abstained

Main ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)’s chairperson Fayyaz Ismail, on Saturday night, remarked the party can win the second round, by facing it with the support of voters who abstained from voting in the first round.

Preliminary results show that the opposition People’s National Congress (PNC)’s candidate Dr. Mohamed Muizzu leads the polls with 46 percent of the votes. MDP’s candidate, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih follows in second with 39 percent of the votes.

Fayyaz has previously stated MDP will surely secure no less than 56 percent of the vote during the campaign.

Speaking to Sun on Saturday night regarding the poll results – Fayyaz cited the biggest mistake of the party in writing down the particular estimate as their expectation of a greater voter turnout. Therewith, Fayyaz said the party will undertake all efforts to reach more supporters to increase the voter turnout in the second round. 

“Our prediction was wrong. The main reason behind this, we believe is the amount of people we expected to vote, had not,” he added.

“In the remaining days, we will work very hard to reach out to voters. By accomplishing this, we still believe we can win the second round. We will also seek discussions with other individuals who contested the election regarding moving forward with us,” he further said.

Fayyaz, noting MDP will hold discussions with all parties on forming a coalition in the second round, stressed the party had been open to discussions from the start.

However, he said he is unable to predict the possible number of votes in a second round at present.

“We believe such a large number of voters abstaining is something that can be changed. Can also believe a significant amount of these voters will vote for us,” he said.

Fayyaz said MDP is open to holding discussions with The Democrats, the new political party formed by a large number of members who defected MDP, in light of the runoff. He added that MDP, will always be open, and can work alongside all parties.