Candidates confident of winning presidential race

22 September 2007
Report: Soodh

Three candidates have so far confirmed their intention to run for next year’s presidential election. Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party, DRP leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Islamic Democratic Party leader Umar Naseer and Member of Parliament for Male’ constituency and former MDP leader currently working to form Social Liberal Party, Ibrahim Ismail (Ibraa) have confirmed that they would be competing in the presidential election.

Speaking to Velidhoo Community, DRP spokesman Ibrahim Shafiu said that the main reason why the party has appointed Gayoom was the fact that he would receive an overwhelming majority in the elections. He said that the party is very confident that President Gayoom will win an unprecedented seventh-term of office, the first multi-party elections to be held in the country.

He also said that if the party members are not that confident of winning the election under Gayoom’s leadership, then they would not have been following his leadership.

Ibraa also said that he is very confident of winning presidential race. He said there is no real challenge for him and said that he can beat both Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Umar Naseer.

However, Ibraa is aware of the fact that it would change the situation by the time elections comes to a close. He said there would be more candidates running for office and that might bring about a challenge for him. Therefore, he said that only when all candidates are finalized he could say a final world, but is in buoyant mood.

Islamic Democratic Party leader Umar Naseer said that he will not say that surely he will win the election, but remains optimistic that he can win the election. He said that it would be a lie if he did not win after so confidently saying that he would win. However, he said that he is running for office since he has high hopes for winning the election.

Maldivian Democratic Party, MDP has also said that they are very confident of winning presidential election since the party received more than 30% of the votes during the referendum in which only MDP supported for a parliamentary system in oppose to the rest of the parties.

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