Skip to main content

Pro-China Candidate Mohamed Muizzu Wins Maldives Presidency

By
Pro-China Candidate Mohamed Muizzu Wins Maldives Presidency

Mohamed Muizzu played a pivotal role in an earlier government's development programme

Male:

Pro-China candidate Mohamed Muizzu won Saturday's presidential election in the Maldives, a result set to once again upend the archipelago's relationship with traditional benefactor India.

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 percent of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.

"Congratulations to president-elect Muizzu," Solih wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "I also congratulate the people who have shown a peaceful and democratic process."

Muizzu made a brief appearance outside his party's campaign headquarters to urge supporters not to celebrate until Sunday morning, when campaign restrictions officially come to an end.

Solih, 61, will serve as caretaker president until his successor is inaugurated on November 17.

The result upends Solih's efforts to revert the country's diplomatic posture back towards New Delhi since taking office five years ago.

Muizzu played a pivotal role in an earlier government's development programme, bankrolled in part by financial largesse from China's Belt and Road infrastructure 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.

Muizzu's mentor, former president Abdulla Yameen, borrowed heavily from China for construction projects and spurned India.

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 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.

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 Saturday, Muizzu urged the outgoing president to use his executive power and transfer Yameen to house arrest.

Turnout in Saturday's poll was 85 percent, slightly higher than the first-round vote held earlier this month.

Watchdog group Transparency Maldives said there had been some incidents of "electoral violence," without specifying 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.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Adblock test (Why?)



from NDTV News- Special https://ift.tt/wpgvLT2 https://ift.tt/i0PxZ81
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Korea Says It Tested New Strategic Cruise Missile

By
North Korea test-fired a new generation of strategic cruise missile on Wednesday. (Representational) Seoul: North Korea fired several cruise missiles towards the Yellow Sea on Wednesday, Seoul's military said, the latest in a series of tension-raising moves by the nuclear-armed state. Hours later, North Korea appeared to confirm the firing, saying it had carried out its first test of a new generation of strategic cruise missiles it is developing, the Pulhwasal-3-31. Pyongyang has accelerated weapons testing in the new year, including tests of what it called an "underwater nuclear weapon system" and a solid-fuelled hypersonic ballistic missile. "Our military detected several cruise missiles launched by North Korea towards the Yellow Sea at around 7:00 am today," the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Unlike their ballistic counterparts, the testing of cruise missiles is not banned under current UN sanctions against Pyongyang. Cruise...
Post a Comment
Read more

18-Year-Old Killed By Friends Over Mobile Game Password In Bengal: Cops

By
According to cops, accused "friends" attempted to burn the victim after killing him. (Representational) Kolkata: An argument over sharing the password of an online mobile game allegedly led to the murder of a teenage boy by four of his friends in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, a senior police officer said. The body of 18-year-old Papai Das, who had been missing since January 8, was discovered near Nishindra Ghat of the feeder canal in Farakka on Monday, police said. Papai, a class 10 student, was reportedly killed by his four "close" friends after a disagreement over sharing the password for a mobile online game. The accused individuals have been arrested, police added. "These five individuals used to play online games at one of the quarters of the Farakka Barrage. The victim went out on the evening of January 8 and never returned. On January 9, the family lodged a police complaint. "Based on preliminary investigations, we discovered that...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Jaiswal Has Run Ahead Of Gill": Ex-India Star's Massive T20 WC Verdict

By
Former India opener Aakash Chopra has suggested that Yashasvi Jaiswal is slightly ahead of Shubman Gill in the pecking order as captain Rohit Sharma's partner at the top in T20Is. Since making his debut last year, Jaiswal has been in stunning form in the shortest format of the game. Gill's form, on the other hand, has dipped since the ODI World Cup last year in India. With the T20 World Cup scheduled to be held later this year, Chopra feels Jaiswal will open the innings with Rohit during the tournament. "It's clear that Yashasvi Jaiswal has run ahead of Shubman Gill. Yashasvi is ahead in the two-horse race, Gill is lagging slightly behind. Gill was played in the first match, dropped in the second, and wasn't played in the third as well," Chopra said on his YouTube channel. Jaiswal helped India beat Afghanistan in the second T20I earlier this week, scoring a quickfire fifty. Considering his recent form across formats, Chopra emphasised that Jaiswal has ...
Post a Comment
Read more