Muizzu and Sembe elected leader and deputy leader of PNC

President-elect Dr. Mohamed Muizzu and vice president-elect Hussain Mohamed Latheef (Sembe) has been elected leader and the deputy leader of People’s National Congress (PNC) respectively.

In a tweet on Wednesday night, Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) run under the same leadership as PNC, said Muizzu and Sembe were elected leader and the deputy leader of PNC during a council meeting held tonight. It was also noted Abdul Raheem Abdulla, who had been serving as the party’s leader until now, had been elected party’s chairperson at the meeting.

The changes were approved by the unanimous votes of 40 members who attended Wednesday night’s meeting.

PNC was first incepted during PPM’s first administration following internal conflicts that arose between PPM’s founder, former president Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom and PPM’s leader and then-president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayyoom, during which Yameen feared losing dominance over PPM.

Yameen who was PPM-PNC coalition’s initial presidential candidate was deemed ineligible to contest the presidential election by the unanimous consensus of the seven justices of the Supreme Court.

Muizzu and Sembe contested the election on PNC’s ticket subsequently, as the coalition’s ‘Plan B’ under circumstances Yameen cannot contest. Muizzu won PNC’s ticket by competing with the party’s parliamentary group leader, Maduvvari MP Adam Shareef Umar.

He went on to win the presidential election by a landslide, defeating the incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. Muizzu, in this regard, received 54 percent votes while President Solih received 46 percent of the votes.