Pro-China candidate wins presidential vote in Maldives
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Election winner Mohamed Muizzu helms a party that presided over an influx of Chinese loans when it last held power.
PHOTO: REUTERS
MALE – Pro-China candidate Mohamed Muizzu won Saturday’s presidential election in the Maldives,
Mr Muizzu, 45, helms a party that presided over an influx of Chinese loans when it last held power in the atoll nation, better known for its luxury beach resorts and celebrity tourists.
He won 54.06 per cent of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.
“Congratulations to President-elect Muizzu,” Mr Solih wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I also congratulate the people who have shown a peaceful and democratic process.”
Mr Muizzu made a brief appearance outside his party’s campaign headquarters to urge supporters not to celebrate until Sunday morning, when campaign restrictions officially came to an end.
Mr Solih, 61, will serve as caretaker president until his successor is inaugurated on Nov 17.
The result upends Mr Solih’s efforts to revert the country’s diplomatic posture back towards New Delhi since taking office five years ago.
Mr Muizzu played a pivotal role in an earlier government’s development programme, bankrolled in part by financial largesse from China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
He told a meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials last year that his party’s return to office would “script a further chapter of strong ties between our two countries”.
Geopolitical hotspot
The Maldives sits in a strategically vital position in the middle of the Indian Ocean, astride one of the world’s busiest East-West shipping lanes.
Mr Muizzu’s mentor, former president Abdulla Yameen, borrowed heavily from China for construction projects and spurned India.
Mr Solih was elected in 2018 on the back of discontent with Yameen’s increasingly autocratic rule, accusing him of pushing the country into a Chinese debt trap.
Yameen’s turn towards Beijing had also alarmed New Delhi, which shares concerns with the United States and its allies about China’s growing assertiveness in the Indian Ocean.
India is a member of the strategic Quad alliance alongside the United States, Australia and Japan.
But Mr Solih’s restoration of the Maldives’ traditional posture itself proved controversial, with many in the archipelago disapproving of India’s outsized political and economic clout.
Incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (right) casts his ballot in the run-off poll, at a polling station in Male.
PHOTO: AFP
Mr Muizzu has vowed to free Yameen, currently serving an 11-year sentence for corruption on the same prison island where he had jailed many of his political opponents during his tenure.
In his brief appearance on Saturday, Mr Muizzu urged the outgoing president to use his executive power and transfer Yameen to house arrest.
Turnout in Saturday’s poll was 85 per cent, slightly higher than the first-round vote held earlier last month.
Supporters of election winner Mohamed Muizzu demand the release of former president Abdulla Yameen, who is serving an 11-year sentence for corruption.
PHOTO: AFP
Watchdog group Transparency Maldives said there had been some incidents of electoral violence, without revealing further details.
Officials said one voter broke open a plastic ballot box, but the ballots were saved and there was no interruption to the count.
Police reported arresting 14 people, mostly for taking photographs of their marked ballot papers and sharing them on social media. AFP
