Pro-China Party Wins In Maldives Parliamentary Elections
The party of Maldives’s President Mohamed Muizzu’s party looks set to have won Sunday’s election in a landslide in an outcome likely to accelerate the country’s shift away from traditional ally India in favour of China.
Muizzu’s People’s National Congress (PNC) secured 66 out of the 86 seats declared, according to provisional results from the Elections Commission of the Maldives on Sunday night.
Local media said the party could win a super majority – three-quarters of all the seats in parliament.
The formal ratification of the results is expected to take a week and the new assembly will take office from early May.
Only three women candidates from the 41 who stood as candidates were elected, the local Mihaaru newspaper said, adding that the winners were all members of Muizzu’s PNC.
The vote was seen as a crucial test for Muizzu’s plan to press ahead with closer economic cooperation with China, after winning presidential election last September.
The PNC and its allies had only eight seats in the outgoing parliament, which made it difficult for Muizzu to push ahead with his policies after winning the presidential election last September.
The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), which had previously had a super-majority of its own, looked headed for a humiliating defeat with just a dozen seats.
The Maldives, a low-lying nation of some 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800km (500 miles) across the equator, is one of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rises caused by the climate crisis.
Muizzu, a 45-year-old former Construction Minister, has promised that land reclamation and building islands higher will address the challenge, but environmentalists argue such a move could exacerbate flooding risks.
He has also pledged to end the country’s “India First” policy, putting relations with New Delhi under strain. His government has asked dozens of Indian military personnel who operate reconnaissance aircraft given by India to patrol the country’s borders to leave, a move critics say could accelerate the Maldives’ pivot towards China.
ALJAZEERA
