A former political prisoner swept to victory in the Maldives’ first democratic presidential election, officials said yesterday, unseating Asia’s longest-serving leader and sparking scenes of celebration.
Supporters of Mohamed “Anni” Nasheed hugged each other and drove around the capital of the Indian Ocean atoll nation from shortly after dawn, waving flags representing his party, as the scale of his victory became clear.
The election commission said that with all votes counted from Tuesday’s watershed poll, Nasheed had won 54.21 percent to 45.79 percent for incumbent leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
PHOTO: AFP
“I want a peaceful transition,” Nasheed told reporters during a visit to a mosque as results were coming in. “I want my supporters to be calm.”
Gayoom, 71, has ruled the tourist paradise islands unchallenged since 1978 and had repeatedly thrown Nasheed in jail over a period of six years.
Conceding defeat on state radio, Gayoom said that he would give his “full support and cooperation” to Nasheed taking power.
“I thank the people of the Maldives for allowing me to serve them for 30 years,” he said.
Thousands of Nasheed supporters drove around the capital Male waving their yellow flags, as others embraced at a beach-front promenade where young people had camped for days to drum up support for his campaign.
“This is spontaneous joy,” Aishath Aniya said.
Fathimath Niusha, a 27-year-old school teacher, said she was thrilled with the change of leadership.
“I want to see how it will be under a new president,” Niusha said. “All my life, it had been under Gayoom.”
Gayoom had failed to win an outright victory in the first round of voting three weeks ago, prompting a run-off against the charismatic Nasheed, 41, a former Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience.”
Nasheed, a political moderate, has promised to root out corruption, improve healthcare and communications to remote islands, cut state spending and turn the lavish presidential palace into the first university in the country.
The Maldives, a liberal Sunni Muslim nation of 1,192 coral islands and some 300,000 people, has never had multi-party elections before.
Until a few years ago, anyone declaring an intention to seek high office would be banished to an uninhabited island.
The elections followed Gayoom’s promise to bring political freedoms to the archipelago in the wake of pro-democracy protests and mounting international pressure.
Despite its popularity as an exotic holiday destination for the rich, the country is beset with corruption, an acute housing shortage and a serious drug problem said to affect one in three youngsters.
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