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Pro-China Leader’s Party in Maldives Win In A Landslide

Pro-China Leader's Party in Maldives Win In A Landslide

Pro-China leader’s party in Maldives, President Mohammed Muizzu win in a landslide election on Sunday.

Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won control of parliament in a landslide on Sunday, with voters supporting his shift toward China and away from regional giant and longtime benefactor India.

According to provisional results from the Maldives Elections Commission, Muizzu’s People’s National Congress (PNC) won more than two-thirds of seats in the 93-member parliament.

Current Results From The Elections

The PNC had obtained 66 of the 86 declared seats, which was more than enough for a supermajority.

The formal ratification of the results is expected to take a week, with the new parliament taking office in early May.

According to the local Mihaaru newspaper, only three female candidates were chosen out of a total of 41, with the winners coming from Muizzu’s PNC.

The referendum was viewed as a critical test of Muizzu’s ambition to pursue greater economic cooperation with China, which included the construction of thousands of residences on controversially reclaimed land.

The PNC and its allies held only eight seats in the outgoing parliament, preventing Muizzu from forming a majority following his presidential election victory in September.

The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which had previously held a supermajority, faced devastating defeat with only a dozen seats.

How The Voting Started

Muizzu, 45, was among the first to vote Sunday, casting his ballot at a school in Male, the capital, where he had previously served as mayor, and encouraged Maldivians to turn out in large numbers.

The Maldives, a low-lying republic of 1,192 small coral islands strewn around 800 kilometers across the equator, is one of the most vulnerable countries to global warming-induced sea level rise.

Muizzu, a former construction minister, has promised to push back the waves by extensive land reclamation and island-building, a scheme that environmentalists fear may worsen flooding dangers.

The Maldives is a popular luxury holiday destination because of its pure white beaches and secluded resorts.

However, in recent years, it has become a geopolitical hotspot in the Indian Ocean, as global east-west shipping channels cross through the archipelago.

Muizzu won the presidential election in September as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, who was released last week after a court overturned his 11-year prison sentence for corruption.

As the legislative elections approached, Muizzu awarded high-profile infrastructure projects to Chinese state-owned businesses.

His administration is also in the process of returning a garrison of 89 Indian troops who fly surveillance planes donated by New Delhi to guard the Maldives’ extensive maritime borders.

The outgoing parliament, which is dominated by Muizzu’s immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s pro-India MDP, has attempted to undermine his efforts to reorient Maldivian diplomacy.

Since Muizzu came to power, lawmakers have blocked three of his cabinet nominees and rejected some of his spending ideas.