Pro-China candidate Mohamed Muizzu wins Maldives presidency : PM Modi congratulates new President elect

Runoff vote was widely seen as a referendum on whether to pursue closer ties between Maldives and China or with India, both vying for influence in the island nation.

Muizzu won over 54% of the vote in the run-off contest, prompting incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to concede defeat shortly before midnight.  

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the Maldives president, shows his ink-marked finger after casting his ballot during the first round of the presidential election. “Congratulations to president-elect Muizzu,” Solih wrote on X. “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 will serve as caretaker president until his successor is inaugurated on 17 November.

This election was pitched as a larger geopolitical battle between India and China, which over the past decade have been engaged in a tug-of-war to gain influence over the Maldives.

While the tussle is not new, the narrative of India versus China has reached a fever pitch in this election, where opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu is trying to unseat the government of Mohamed Solih and has put resistance to India’s perceived influence over the Maldives at the forefront of his agenda.

Since Solih came to power in a surprise win in 2018, he has moved the country much closer to India – which has historically long ties with the Maldives.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated and extended greetings to Dr Mohamed Muizzu on being elected as President of the Maldives. 

In a social media post, the Prime Minister said that India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region. 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 program, 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”. 

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, says a report in 'The Guardian'. 

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 on Saturday, Muizzu urged the outgoing president to use his executive power and transfer Yameen to house arrest. Turnout in Saturday’s poll was 85%, 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.