Opposition leader Mohamed Muizzu won the presidential elections in the Maldives on Saturday against incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. Report that Maldivian media. Muizzu obtained 53.9 percent of the total votes in the second round of the elections, in which the two remaining candidates competed against each other.
Due to Muizzu’s profits, the Maldives will most likely return under Chinese influence in the coming years. China already gained a lot of influence in the country between 2013 and 2018, when the Maldives joined the East Asian country’s New Silk Road under the leadership of President Abdullah Yameen. China subsequently carried out several infrastructure projects, but the archipelago currently also has a debt of at least 1.4 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) to the country of President Xi Jinping.
In 2018, Solih surprisingly won the previous presidential elections. The ties with India subsequently improved, and those with China deteriorated, but the Maldives then entered into virtually the same debts with India. That is one of the reasons why Muizzi, who is seen as a puppet of Yameen, who was imprisoned for corruption, had a chance to win.
The archipelago with around 550,000 inhabitants is interesting for both China and India because it is strategically located in the Indian Ocean on important trade and shipping routes between Europe, Africa, the Far East and Australia.
Also read: Residents of the Maldives choose between Chinese or Indian influence