Male: Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen suffered a comprehensive defeat in the presidential polls with the opposition’s Ibrahim Mohamed Solih winning by a margin of 16.6% votes. Despite Yameen’s efforts to muzzle democracy by imposing emergency and jailing opposition leaders and judges, the voters rejected his regime, ushering a change that promises to reconfigure geopolitics in the Indian Ocean. PM Narendra Modi congratulated Solih and conveyed his wishes for strengthening of democracy, peace and prosperity in the Maldives. The two agreed to work together to strengthen relations between the countries.
Nasheed expected to play a guiding role
Maldives ex-president Md Nasheed said that the new government would audit infrastructure projects in the light of alleged “land grab” by Chinese interests and also said two Indian military choppers, which Yameen had wanted to send back, would remain in the archipelago. According to the election commission, incumbent Abdulla Yameen got 41.7% of the vote to opposition candidate Ibrahim Solih’s 58.3% with over 89% voters turning out, indicating that opposition unity and the incumbent’s deeply unpopular regime had turned the tables on the ruling party and its backers.
Yameen will remain in office till his tenure ends in November but declared that he had accepted the results. India has waged a battle of attrition with the Yameen regime ever since the leader declared emergency in February and refused to heed advice to restore democratic functioning, banking on support he received from China. China’s strategy of betting on autocratic leaders, seeing them as “single window” power centres, came unstuck as it had in Sri Lanka where it backed Mahinda Rajapaksa or Malaysia’s Mohammed Najib.
Apart from an audit, the new government is also expected to look into how much money came into Maldives in the recent past. “I am optimistic China will understand Maldives’s reasons for doing (audits) given what has happened recently in countries like Sri Lanka and Malaysia,’’ Nasheed said as he thanked India for its support to the joint opposition.
While Yameen had ensured disqualification of Nasheed from the polls, the pro-India former president was the tallest leader of the opposition coalition and is expected to play a guiding role for the new government headed by Solih. “We will work with India for a meaningful safety and security umbrella in the Indian Ocean,’’ Nasheed said. He added that the voters had made it clear who they were aligned with. “We would like to plug into India’s development and its democratic institutions for capacity building. Connectivity is another important issue India can help us with.”
Nasheed though ruled out becoming a part of the government.
