(Malé) The party of the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, won a landslide victory in the legislative elections on Sunday, according to the first results, the voters having oriented their vote towards the policy of rapprochement with China of the head of state, in to the detriment of India, long the dominant power in the tourist archipelago of the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Muizzu’s party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), won 66 seats out of the first 86 declared, according to the results of the Maldives Electoral Commission, which far exceeds the absolute majority in this unicameral parliament which has only 93 members.
The vote, whose results came earlier than expected, was seen as a crucial test for Mr. Muizzu’s plan to strengthen economic cooperation with China, including the construction of thousands of apartments on reclaimed land. controversial.
Mr. Muizzu awarded infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies in April, a controversial decision in the midst of the campaign for legislative elections.
The PNC and its allies only had eight seats under the outgoing legislature, which paralyzed Mohamed Muizzu, elected in September.
President Muizzu, aged 45, was one of the first to vote on Sunday, in a school in the capital Male, where he was mayor between 2021 and 2023, urging Maldivians to go to the polls.
PHOTO MOHAMED AFRAH, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu
The Maldives, a favored holiday destination with pristine white sand beaches, occupies a strategic position on major international east-west shipping routes, and has become a hotbed of geopolitical rivalry between India and China.
Agreement with Beijing
“Geopolitics was very present in the background of the parties’ campaign for Sunday’s elections,” a collaborator of Mr. Muizzu told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
Mr Muizzu vowed to expel the 89 Indian military personnel stationed in the island country to fly three planes gifted to the Maldives by India to carry out patrols across their vast maritime territory.
The withdrawal began in March with the departure of 25 soldiers stationed in Addu atoll, the southernmost of the archipelago.
“He is working on it,” said his colleague, believing however that “Parliament did not cooperate with him”.
Since Mohamed Muizzu, 45, took office at the end of 2023, MPs have blocked three of his government appointments and refused some of his budget proposals.
The outgoing Parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of his predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, sought to thwart his efforts to reorient the archipelago’s diplomacy.
Former president and mentor of Mr. Muizzu Abdulla Yameen (2013-2018) was released on Thursday, following the annulment by a court of his eleven-year prison sentence for corruption and money laundering.
The Maldives High Court ordered a retrial, ruling that the one held in 2022 had not been fair.
Mr. Yameen promised to continue the anti-Indian campaign which allowed his ally to win the presidential election last September.
Also in March, Malé signed a “military assistance” agreement with Beijing which aims to “strengthen bilateral ties”, according to the Maldivian Ministry of Defense
India considers the archipelago part of its sphere of influence, but the Maldives fell into the orbit of China – its largest foreign creditor – with the election of Mr Muizzu.