How to setup Merge Request Approvals without self-voting?

Hi,

We currently have some feature branches which get merged into the protected master branch by a member of the “masters” group.
The masters group contains people who are the best source code commitors.

We’d like to change the system so that two people from masters have to approve the merge, but once we enable merge request approvals then any developer can vote to approve any merge - even their own! Is this intended?

Is there a way of configuring GItLab to achieve this?

Many thanks.

Edit: and if we specify named people to approve the commit, those are only suggestions, not requirements. The developer can change them.