New Delhi: A pro-China candidate has won the presidential election in the Maldives, defeating the incumbent who had strengthened ties with India. He won 54.06 percent of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.
New Delhi: A pro-China candidate has won the presidential election in the Maldives, defeating the incumbent who had strengthened ties with India. He won 54.06 percent of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.
President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has accepted
PM Modi has congratulated Muijju after winning. He wrote on X, ‘Congratulations and best wishes to Muijju on his election as the President of Maldives. India is committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral ties and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean region.’
In a message on X, President Solih congratulated Muijju on his victory and thanked the people of the Maldives for a “beautiful democratic example”. Muijju said that the people have given the mandate loud and clear.
Muizzu made a brief appearance outside his party’s campaign headquarters and urged supporters not to celebrate until Sunday morning, when campaign restrictions officially end. Solih, 61, will serve as acting president until his successor takes office on November 17.
The result thwarts Solih’s efforts to shift the country’s diplomatic posture back toward New Delhi since taking office five years ago. Muizu played a key role in the earlier government’s development program, partly funded by financial largesse from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
He said in a meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials last year that his party’s return to office would “write another chapter of stronger relations between our two countries”. The Maldives occupies a strategically important position on one of the world’s busiest east-west shipping lanes in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Muizzu’s mentor, former President Abdullah Yameen, borrowed heavily from China for construction projects and spurned India.Solih was elected in 2018 out of dissatisfaction with Yameen’s increasingly autocratic rule, accusing him of pushing the country into a Chinese debt trap.
Yameen’s stance toward Beijing had also worried New Delhi, which shares concerns with the United States and its allies about China’s growing aggressiveness in the Indian Ocean. India is a member of the strategic Quad alliance with the United States, Australia and Japan.
But Solih’s restoration of the Maldives’ traditional status itself proved controversial, with many in the archipelago rejecting India’s greater political and economic clout. Muizzu has vowed to release Yameen, who is currently serving an 11-year sentence for corruption on the same prison island where he jailed many of his political opponents during his tenure.
In his brief appearance on Saturday, Muizzu urged the outgoing president to use his executive power and put Yameen under house arrest. Saturday’s vote saw 85 percent turnout, slightly higher than the first round of voting earlier this month.
Mohammad Muijju holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Leeds, UK. He was Born in 1978. He entered politics in 2012 as Housing Minister. When Yameen came to power, he appointed Mohamed Muijju as minister and signed off on some major projects, such as a $200 million (£164 million) bridge linking Male with an international airport on an isolated island. Mohammad Muijju won the election from the capital Male in 2021 and became the mayor for the first time from his party.
