Opinion | Voters re-energise Maldivian democracy, but new leaders are unlikely to push China away
Under its iron-fisted former president, the Maldives, an enthusiastic participant in belt and road projects, was seen as just another chess piece in the geopolitical tug of war between India and China, Ankit Panda writes
The world’s eyes have been on the United Nations in the penultimate week of September, but don’t let the antics in New York overshadow a momentous election result in a small country in the northern Indian Ocean.
On September 23, voters in the Maldives delivered an astounding mandate to Ibrahim “Ibu” Mohamed Solih, the candidate of a joint opposition coalition. Solih was facing tall odds, making his victory all the more surprising.
He was going up against Abdulla Yameen, who had taken the small atoll country in a decidedly autocratic direction. Yameen had cracked down on the country’s former and first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, who had been imprisoned after a sham trial in 2015, and went on to target the country’s first president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, his own half-brother, earlier this year.
All this accompanied a general restriction on freedoms in the country and even a declaration of a state of emergency earlier this year. Yameen’s iron-fisted turn took the country away from its historic partner, India, and drew it towards China.
The country enthusiastically signed up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, took out major loans to finance infrastructure projects and entered a free-trade agreement with China in the final weeks of 2017 without proper legislative deliberations.