Maldives Elections To Test President’s Anti-India Policy Amid Tensions

Mali, Maldives: 

The Maldives votes Sunday in a parliamentary election likely to test President Mohamed Muizzu’s tilt towards China and away from India, the luxury tourism hotspot’s traditional benefactor.

Primarily known as one of the most expensive holiday destinations in South Asia, with pristine white beaches and secluded resorts, the strategic Indian Ocean island nation has also become a geopolitical hotspot.

Global east-west shipping lanes pass the nation’s chain of 1,192 tiny coral islands, stretching around 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator.

President Mohamed Muizzu, 45, won last September’s presidential poll as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, this week freed after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.

This month, he awarded high-profile infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies as campaigning for the parliamentary elections was in full swing.

His administration is also in the process of sending home a garrison of 89 Indian troops that operate reconnaissance aircraft gifted by New Delhi to patrol the vast maritime borders of the archipelago.

The current parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of his immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has sought to stymie his efforts to realign the archipelago’s diplomacy