By Maahil Mohamed and Mujib Mashal
President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldives was defeated in the presidential runoff on Saturday, in a race that was proving to be as much a referendum on the competition between India and China for influence as it was a chance to determine the small island nation’s next leader.
Mohamed Muizzu, mayor of the capital, Malé City, who has pushed for stronger ties with China, won with an 8-point lead over Solih with nearly all votes counted, according to the election commission’s website.
Solih, in a message on X, formerly known as Twitter, congratulated Muizzu on his victory and thanked the people of the Maldives for “the beautiful democratic example.” Voter turnout was reported at more than 85%.
“The people have spoken loud and clear — they wish for prosperity and guaranteed sovereignty for the country,” Muizzu told a group of supporters after declaring his victory.
The 45-year-old president-elect has a doctorate in civil engineering from the United Kingdom and worked as an engineer in the private sector before joining politics. Before becoming mayor of the capital city, he had served as minister of housing and infrastructure.
The campaign season has focused on a range of issues, including a housing crisis in the overcrowded capital, which is scarce on land, and the country’s declining dollar reserves. That problem prompted parties to offer competing “de-dollarization” proposals relating to trade.
But none of the issues have hung as heavily as the influence of the two Asian giants over the future of the Maldives, a nation of about a half-million people that lies 450 miles south of India. The Maldives, known as a tourist destination that is also at the front lines of climate change, is particularly important because it sits along busy shipping routes in the Indian Ocean.
“The fact is, either of them will try to control the Maldives — it is inevitable,” Mohamed Rauhan Ahmed, 27, a political science student, said of China and India on Saturday outside a polling station in Malé City.
While his preferred candidate was not in the runoff, he said, “For a change, we experienced peace and freedom in the last five years” under Solih.
For China and India, the jostling for influence among their neighbors is nothing new. China enjoyed an early advantage because of its deep pockets and the development loans it brought as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, but India has asserted itself more in the region in recent years.
New Delhi stepped in to assist Sri Lanka with billions of dollars when the country’s economy crashed last year. It has also expanded its presence and projects in the Maldives since Solih won the presidency in 2018, ending the five-year tenure of the pro-Beijing Abdulla Yameen, who is now in prison for corruption.
Outside a voting site in the Hulhumalé district of the capital, Ahmed Rassam, 36, complained of government graft and a lack of a promised judicial overhaul. “But mostly, we sensed the unpleasant feeling of losing our nation’s sovereignty to India,” he said in explaining his support for Muizzu. “He can bring progressive change.”
As the election race heated up, the main opposition coalition, which includes Muizzu’s People’s National Congress, made maligning the current government’s growing relations with India a main focus. Using slogans like “India Out,” it has denounced Solih’s government for bringing a small contingent of Indian military personnel to the island.
While Solih has embraced his ties to India, inviting investment from its companies and development aid from its government, he has denied that it has been at the cost of relationships with other countries. During one election debate, Solih also rejected the opposition’s assertion about the nature of foreign troops’ activity, saying, “There is no Indian military personnel conducting military work in the Maldives.”
In the initial round of voting early in September, which featured eight candidates, Solih got 39%, trailing Muizzu’s 46%. When neither managed a first-round victory by getting half of the vote, the race was pushed into a runoff.
The incumbent was undermined by a messy public split in his Maldivian Democratic Party, with Solih’s childhood friend, Mohamed Nasheed, a former president, parting ways before the election to create his own party. Nasheed, who helped Solih become president, had felt increasingly marginalized.
The candidate put forward by Nasheed’s new party received 7% of the vote, making it a potential kingmaker in the runoff. But Nasheed, now the speaker of parliament, has found himself in a difficult spot, torn between his longtime closeness to India and the breakdown of his relationship with the president, which he has said cannot be surmounted.
Nasheed’s party announced that it would “refrain from supporting either candidate” in the runoff, results of which were expected Saturday evening.