Maldives presidential election run-off heading for a cliffhanger

The presidential election run-off in the Maldives scheduled for September 30 is keeping both India and China on tenterhooks as it is still not clear whether incumbent Ibrahim Solih or opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzi has the odds in his favour, writes ETV Bharat’s Aroonim Bhuyan.

New Delhi: With alliances changing and key players remaining non-committal in public, the Maldives presidential election run-off between incumbent Ibrahim Solih and his opponent Mohamed Muizzu scheduled for September 30 seems to be heading for a cliffhanger of a contest. With none of the eight candidates in the fray securing 50 per cent of the vote in the first round of voting on September 9, the presidential election is headed for a run-off between Solih and Muizzu on September 30. In the first round, Muizzu garnered 46.06 per cent of the votes while Solih got 39.05 per cent. A run-off is required when none of the candidates gets 50 per cent of the votes.

Muizzu, who is the Mayor of the Maldives’ capital Male, is the joint candidate of the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM). Initially, former President Abdulla Yameen of the PPM, known for his pro-China stance, was nominated as the joint candidate of the PNC and the PPM. But, since Yameen is serving an 11-year jail term due to a money laundering case, he became ineligible to contest the election. As a result, Muizzu of the PNC was nominated as the joint PNC-PPM candidate.

Solih, who is known as being pro-India, is the leader of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). He qualified to contest the election after defeating former President Mohamed Nasheed in the MDP primaries in January this year. A few months after his defeat in the primaries, Nasheed parted ways with Solih, a childhood friend, and floated a new party called The Democrats. Nasheed, who is also known for his pro-India stance, then put up Ilyas Labeeb as The Democrats’ candidate against incumbent President Solih. Labeeb, however, could garner only 7.18 per cent of the votes in the first round.

With Muizzu taking the lead in the first round, the presidential run-off scheduled for September 30 will keep India on its toes. As part of New Delhi’s Neighbourhood First Policy, the Maldives is strategically significant to India because of its location in the Indian Ocean. India and Maldives share ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious and commercial links steeped in antiquity and enjoy close, cordial and multi-dimensional relations. However, regime instability in the Maldives since 2008 has posed significant challenges to the India-Maldives relationship, particularly in the political and strategic spheres.

Ties between India and the Maldives deteriorated significantly when Yameen served as the President between 2013 and 2018. It was only after Solih came to power in 2018 that ties between New Delhi and Male improved. Although India continues to be an important partner of the Maldives, New Delhi cannot afford to be complacent over its position and must remain attentive to the developments in the Maldives. India must play a key role within the Indo-Pacific security space to ensure regional security in South Asia and surrounding maritime boundaries. China’s strategic footprint in India’s neighbourhood has increased. The Maldives has emerged as an important 'pearl' in China’s “String of Pearls” construct in South Asia.

Nasheed, till the filing of this report, has remained non-committal about whether his party The Democrats would back Solih in the run-off. Meanwhile, the Maldives Democratic Alliance (MDA), which had supported the incumbent Solih government, has now switched sides and is backing Muizzi. At the same time, the Jumhooree Party, whose candidate Qasim Ibrahim came fifth in the first round after securing 2.47 per cent of the votes, has decided to back Solih.

President Solih has said that he will emerge the winner if the MDP and The Democrats unite ahead of the run-off. He said that the MDP and The Democrats uniting would produce more votes than the PPM. “If we look at the total votes, we will have more votes than PPM if MDP and Democrats unite,” Solih said at a campaign rally at Thinadhoo city on Wednesday. “Even if we look at individual islands. There are few islands we cannot win a majority in if we unite. It means a landslide victory if we unite.”

According to observers, what went against Solih in the first round was the opposition’s sustained misinformation campaign that the incumbent President allowed the presence of foreign military personnel (read India) in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation. Both Yameen’s PPM and the PNC had fuelled an ‘India Out’ campaign ahead of this year’s presidential election. The ‘India Out’ was aimed at sparking hatred by creating scepticism about India's investments in the Maldives, the defence partnerships between the two sides, and India’s net security provisions. The campaign had support from a limited population. However, President Solih, through a decree issued in April 2022, banned the ‘India Out’ campaign citing it as a “threat to national security”.

“The PPM is much more conservative and pro-China,” Smruti Pattanaik, a research fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, told ETV Bharat. “The PPM tried to arouse nationalistic sentiments by running the ‘India Out’ campaign. Yameen always played the China-India card”. Earlier this month, after the first round of the presidential election, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) also issued a statement affirming its authority over all territories in the country. In a special interview with the state media, Chief of Defence Force Lt Gen Abdullah Shamaal denied the purported presence of Indian troops in the Maldives.

Coming back to the present, it is former President Nasheed, who has emerged as the kingmaker ahead of the run-off. After initially saying that The Democrats would not support Solih, Nasheed is now non-committal about his leanings, at least publicly. In fact, on September 11, two days after the first round, the MDP withdrew a no-confidence against Nasheed as Parliament Speaker.

Nasheed has been pushing for a constitutional referendum to change the country’s political system from a presidential to a parliamentary one. According to Pattanaik, Nasheed is bargaining hard with Solih to hold the referendum to bring about a change in the country’s political system.

“Yameen has assured Nasheed that he will hold the referendum after he is reelected or at least before his next presidency ends,” she explained. But, at the end of the day, no matter what party backs which of the two candidates, the final decision will be made by the voters in the Maldives on September 30.

“This time, the voting pattern is likely to change compared to the first round,” Pattanaik said. “Earlier, they had eight candidates to choose from. But this time there are only two.” So, who will the people of the Maldives opt for, a pro-China candidate or a pro-India one? “Many Maldivian students come to India to study on scholarships,” Pattanaik said. “Maldivians also keep coming to India for medical treatment.”This is why the September 30 presidential election run-off will keep both New Delhi and Beijing on tenterhooks.