Maldivians vote in the shadow of China-India rivalry
Maldivians yesterday voted in a parliamentary election likely to test Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s tilt toward China and away from India, the luxury tourism hot spot’s traditional benefactor.
Among the first to vote was Muizzu, 45, who cast his ballot at the Tajuddin school in the capital, Male.
Maldivian Elections Commission Chairman Fuad Thaufeeq urged the 284,663 eligible voters to cast their ballots early.
Polling stations across the archipelago would be open for nine-and-a-half hours.
Primarily known as one of the most expensive holiday destinations in South Asia, with pristine white beaches and secluded resorts, the atoll nation has also become a geopolitical hot spot in the Indian Ocean.
Global east-west shipping lanes pass the nation’s chain of 1,192 tiny coral islands, which stretch about 800km across the equator.
Muizzu won the presidential poll in September last year as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, freed last week after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.
This month, as campaigning for the parliamentary elections was in full swing, Muizzu awarded highprofile infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies.
His administration is also in the process of sending home a garrison of 89 Indian troops who operate reconnaissance aircraft gifted by New Delhi to patrol the Maldives’ vast maritime borders.
The current parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party of Muizzu’s immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has sought to stymie his efforts to realign the archipelago’s diplomacy.
“Geopolitics is very much in the background as parties campaign for votes in Sunday’s election,” a senior aide of Muizzu said, asking not to be named. “He came to power on a promise to send back Indian troops and he is working on it. The parliament has not been cooperating with him since he came to power.”
Since Muizzu came to office, lawmakers have blocked three of his nominees to the Cabinet and refused some of his spending proposals.
Splits in all the main political parties, including Muizzu’s People’s National Congress party, are expected to make it hard for any single party to win an outright majority.
However, Muizzu’s prospects received a fillip with the release of his mentor Yameen from house arrest on Thursday.
A court in the capital ordered a retrial in the graft and money laundering cases that sent Yameen to prison after he lost a re-election bid in 2018.
Yameen had also backed closer alignment with Beijing while in power, but his conviction left him unable to contest last year’s presidential poll himself.