The party of Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu won a landslide victory in the legislative elections on Sunday, according to initial results, with voters tilting their vote towards the head of state’s policy of rapprochement with China, to the detriment of India, long dominant power on the tourist archipelago of the Indian Ocean.
Mohamed Muizzu’s party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), won 66 seats out of the first 86 declared, according to the results of the Maldives Electoral Commission, which far exceeds the absolute majority in this unicameral parliament which does not has only 93 members.
The vote, whose results came earlier than expected, was seen as a crucial test for Mohamed Muizzu’s plan to strengthen economic cooperation with China, including the construction of thousands of apartments on controversially reclaimed land. . Mohamed Muizzu awarded infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies in April, a controversial decision in the midst of the campaign for the legislative elections.
Agreement with Beijing
The PNC and its allies only had eight seats under the outgoing legislature, which paralyzed Mohamed Muizzu, elected in September. The president, aged 45, was one of the first to vote on Sunday, in a school in the capital Malé, where he was mayor between 2021 and 2023, urging Maldivians to go to the polls.
The Maldives, a favored holiday destination with pristine white sand beaches, occupies a strategic position on major international east-west shipping routes, and has become a hotbed of geopolitical rivalry between India and China.
“Geopolitics was very present in the background of the parties’ campaign for Sunday’s elections”, a collaborator of Mohamed Muizzu told AFP, on condition of anonymity. The President vowed to expel the 89 Indian military personnel stationed in the island country to fly three planes gifted to the Maldives by India to carry out patrols across their vast maritime territory.
The withdrawal began in March with the departure of 25 soldiers stationed in Addu atoll, the southernmost of the archipelago. “He works there”developed his collaborator, believing however that “Parliament did not cooperate with him”.
Read alsoHow Maldives play China against India
His former mentor released Thursday
Since Mohamed Muizzu, 45, took office at the end of 2023, MPs have blocked three of his government appointments and refused some of his budget proposals. The outgoing Parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of his predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, sought to thwart his efforts to reorient the archipelago’s diplomacy.
Former president and mentor of Mohamed Muizzu, Abdulla Yameen (2013-2018), was released on Thursday, following the annulment by a court of his eleven-year prison sentence for corruption and money laundering.
The Maldives High Court ordered a retrial, ruling that the one held in 2022 had not been fair. Abdulla Yameen promised to continue the anti-Indian campaign which allowed his ally to win the presidential election last September. Also in March, Male signed an agreement “military assistance” with Beijing which aims to “strengthen bilateral ties”according to the Maldivian Ministry of Defense