MALE - Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won control of Parliament in an election landslide on April 21, results showed, with voters backing his tilt towards China and away from regional powerhouse and traditional benefactor India.

Dr Muizzu’s People’s National Congress (PNC) had secured more than two-thirds of seats in the 93-member Parliament, according to provisional results from the Elections Commission of Maldives.

The PNC is projected to have 71 seats in the 93-member majlis, or Parliament, full preliminary results showed on April 22, already more than enough for a super-majority. The formal ratification of the results is expected to take a week, and the new assembly is to be in office from early May.

Only three women candidates out of a total of 41 were elected, the local Mihaaru newspaper said, adding that the winners were from Dr Muizzu’s PNC.

The vote was seen as a crucial test for Dr Muizzu’s plan to press ahead with closer economic cooperation with China, including building thousands of apartments on controversially reclaimed land.

China said on April 22 it would seek to strengthen ties with the Maldives.

“China is willing to work with the Maldives to maintain traditional friendship (and) expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

He added that Beijing aimed to “continuously deepen the China-Maldives comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership” as well as “accelerate construction of a community with a shared future for China and the Maldives, and better benefit the two peoples”.

Dr Muizzu’s party was an eager recipient of financial largesse from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure programme, a central pillar of President Xi Jinping’s bid to expand China’s clout overseas.

The PNC and its allies had only eight seats in the outgoing Parliament, with the lack of a majority stymieing Dr Muizzu after his presidential election victory in September.

The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) – which previously had a super-majority of its own – was headed for a humiliating defeat with just a dozen seats.

Dr Muizzu, 45, had been among the first to vote on April 21, casting his ballot at a school in the capital Male – where he was previously mayor – and urging Maldivians to turn out in high numbers.

“All citizens should come out and exercise their right to vote as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

The Maldives, a low-lying nation of some 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800km across the Equator, is one of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rises caused by global warming.

Dr Muizzu, a former construction minister, has promised he will beat back the waves through ambitious land reclamation and building islands higher, a policy which environmentalists argue could even exacerbate flooding risks.

The Maldives is known as a top luxury holiday destination thanks to its pristine white beaches and secluded resorts.

But in recent years, it has also become a geopolitical hot spot in the Indian Ocean, where global east-west shipping lanes pass the archipelago.

Dr Muizzu won September’s presidential polls as a proxy for pro-China former president Abdulla Yameen, freed last week after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.

Indian troops leaving

In April, as campaigning for the parliamentary elections was in full swing, Dr Muizzu awarded high-profile infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies.

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

The outgoing Parliament, dominated by the pro-India MDP of Dr Muizzu’s immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has sought to disrupt his efforts to realign Maldivian diplomacy.

Since Dr Muizzu came to power, lawmakers blocked three of his nominees to the Cabinet and refused some of his spending proposals.

“Geopolitics is very much in the background as parties campaign for votes in Sunday’s election,” a senior Muizzu aide told AFP ahead of the poll, asking not to be named.

“He came to power on a promise to send back Indian troops and he is working on it. The Parliament has not been cooperating with him since he came to power.”

Mr Solih was also among those voting early and expressed confidence his party would emerge victorious. There was no immediate reaction from his party to its poor showing in the vote on April 21.

Election chief Fuad Thaufeeq said after polls closed that turnout had already reached 73 per cent of the 284,663 electorate when half an hour of voting remained. AFP