Not for nothing did the Indian foreign office “welcome the successful completion of the third presidential election process in the Maldives’’ and “heartily congratulate” Ibrahim Mohamed Solih over his victory, and the Maldives Election Commission for early declaration of results. Solih was the joint opposition candidate in an election seen as heavily rigged towards the incumbent President Abdulla Yameen.
New Delhi had patiently held its horses as the pro-China Yameen serially thumbed his nose at Maldives’ old subcontinental ally. Over his reign, he virtually dismantled the ‘India First Policy’—refusing to renew work permits of Indians in the archipelago, pushing the Indian Navy to take back its helicopter from Lammu atoll, ramming through a Free Trade Agreement with China without a discussion in their Parliament. All this while, a quiet and not-so-quiet antagonism was building up against Yameen as he pushed Maldives more and more into China’s arms, inveigled in its debt trap diplomacy, even as he put Supreme Court judges, political opponents and critics in jail.
Obviously, Maldivians took little heart from the so-called friendship bridge that China built in Sinamale at a cost of $188 million. No less than 89 per cent of the voters came out to choose their president, in an election that hopefully will see Maldives return to the path of democracy from Yameen’s perceptibly dictatorial stint. Even the expats in India and Sri Lanka voted in large numbers.
In fact, Sri Lanka has been playing a stellar role of a bulwark when Yameen cracked down on the opposition, affording the head of the Maldivian Democratic Party and ex-President Mohamed Nasheed a safe-house in Colombo. The Damocles’ sword of US and European sanctions were hanging, were the elections not to be free and fair. That too may have helped the tiny population vote without fear. When President Solih formally takes over on November 17—it’s a long-drawn-out process—not only will Maldivians heave a sigh of relief, so would Maldives’ South Asian neighbours, India included.