Opposition candidate confirmed Maldives president-elect

COLOMBO: The shock winner of the Maldives’ leadership vote was declared presidentelect on Saturday, with election authorities saying they had been pressured to delay the final announcement of strongman Abdulla Yameen’s decisive loss.

Common opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won last week’s election with 58.4 per cent of the ballot, or 134,705 votes, election commission chief Ahmed Shareef confirmed.

The commission had released what it called “interim results” on Monday, but the official outcome of the September 23 polls was pushed back to allow legal challenges over the vote’s conduct.

“We received a lot of threats to delay the announcement following baseless accusations,” Shareef said on Saturday in Male, the capital of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

“There were more than 400 complaints, but none of them were deemed to have changed the outcome,” he added.

Outgoing president Yameen, who jailed or exiled most of his rivals during his turbulent five-year term, took just 96,502 votes or 41.6 percent, Shareef said.

Scores of Yameen’s supporters had lodged complaints saying that they and other voters had not been allowed to cast their ballot.

However, nearly 90 per cent of the electorate of 262,135 turned out to vote, according to the official results.