Political turmoil mars Maldives presidential election
A raid on the opposition’s main campaign office and the spectre of US sanctions on government officials did not deter thousands of people from voting in the Maldives’ presidential election yesterday.
Officials began counting votes after the polls closed at 7pm as Maldivians and international observers waited for results to see whether the opposition’s cries of a rigged vote would be validated.
Regional rivals India and China, jostling for greater influence in South Asia, were also watching the process closely.
Famed for its white beaches and luxury resorts, the Maldives under President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has had economic growth and longer life expectancy, the World Bank says.
But Mr Abdul Gayoom’s critics, including the opposition presidential candidate Ibrahim Solih, say he has systematically rolled back democratic freedom, jailing rivals, controlling the courts and clamping down on media.
Few foreign media organisations were allowed in to cover the election and there have been warnings that the Maldives is slipping back to autocratic rule a decade after achieving democracy.
Yesterday’s vote was “a referendum on authoritarianism versus freedom”, said Aiman Rasheed, of the independent watchdog Transparency Maldives.
In February, Mr Abdul Gayoom declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution and ordered troops to storm the Supreme Court and arrest judges and rivals to stave off impeachment. On Saturday, police in the capital Male raided Mr Solih’s main campaign office, saying police intelligence showed that it was being used to organise vote-buying.
The police warrant said that Mr Solih’s senior campaign official, Ahmed Shahid, was suspected of bribing voters. No arrests were made. Opposition supporters in the Maldives and in neighbouring Sri Lanka, where former president Mohamed Nasheed lives in exile, decried the raid as an attempt to rig the vote in favour of Mr Abdul Gayoom.
Voters yesterday stood in long lines in rain and high temperatures to cast ballots.
They also queued up in Malaysia, the UK, India and Sri Lanka, where the opposition had encouraged overseas Maldivians to cast their ballots. Some Maldivian voters in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, said they waited nine hours because of verification delays.
The polls in the Maldives were originally due to close at 4pm but voting hours were extended by three hours because of the high turnout, election commission spokesman Ahmed Akram said.
Outside a polling station at the Imauddin School in Male, aviation worker Mohamed Ismail, 23, said he voted for Mr Solih because “people live in fear” under Mr Abdul Gayoom, who took office in 2013.
Mr Abdul Gayoom used his first term in office to consolidate power, jailing opponents including his half brother, a former president and two Supreme Court justices, and asserting control over the courts. The EU said on Friday that it was not sending election observers because the Maldives had failed to meet the basic conditions for monitoring. The US has threatened to sanction Maldivian officials if the elections are not free and fair.
“Look around. People are moving freely,” said government employee Adam Thaufeeg, 40. Mr Thaufeeg said he voted for Mr Abdul Gayoom because of his vision for developing the Maldives.
More than 260,000 of the nation’s 400,000 people were eligible to vote at about 400 polling stations.