Mohamed Muizzu, who supports China, won the Maldives’ presidential election on Saturday. This could change how the Maldives usually deals with its old friend, India.
Muizzu, who is 45 years old, leads a party that was in charge when the Maldives got a lot of money from China. The Maldives is famous for its fancy beach resorts and famous visitors.
Muizzu got more than half the votes in the final round of the election, so the current president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, admitted he lost.
Solih said on a platform called X (like Twitter), “Congratulations to the new president, Muizzu. I also congratulate the people for having a calm and fair election.
Muizzu came out in front of his party’s campaign office for a short while. He told his supporters not to start celebrating until Sunday morning, when the campaign rules officially finish.
Solih, who is 61 years old, will be in charge until the new president is officially sworn in on November 17.
This election result changes Solih’s plans to shift the country’s friendly ties back to New Delhi, which he’s been working on for the past five years.
Muizzu had an important role in a previous government’s plan for progress, which was partly funded by money from China’s Belt and Road project.
He talked to Chinese Communist Party members last year and said if his party came back into power, it would continue to strengthen the friendship between our two countries.
Geopolitical hotspot
The Maldives is very important because it’s right in the middle of the Indian Ocean, where a lot of ships travel from east to west.
Muizzu’s teacher, ex-president Abdulla Yameen, took a lot of money from China to build things and didn’t pay much attention to India.
Solih became president in 2018 because many people were unhappy with how Yameen was ruling. They said he was becoming too controlling and borrowing too much from China, which put the country in a tough financial situation.
Yameen’s closeness to Beijing also worried New Delhi. India, along with the United States, Australia, and Japan, forms a group called the Quad, which works together to keep an eye on what China is doing in the Indian Ocean.
Solih’s decision to go back to the old way of dealing with India caused some disagreement. A lot of people in the Maldives didn’t like how much influence India had over their politics and economy.
Muizzu promised to release Yameen, who is in jail for stealing money, and is now asking the current president to use his authority to let Yameen stay at home instead of in prison. Yameen had put many of his political rivals in jail during his time as president.
Around 85 percent of the people voted in the election on Saturday, which is a bit more than the first vote earlier this month.
A group called Transparency Maldives mentioned that there were a few cases of “election violence,” but didn’t give specific details.
They said one person opened a plastic box with the votes, but the votes were safe and the counting wasn’t stopped.
The police arrested 14 people, mostly because they took pictures of their marked votes and put them on social media.
SOURCE:FRANCE24