Maldivians yesterday voted in a parliamentary election likely to test Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s tilt toward China and away from India, the luxury tourism hot spot’s traditional benefactor.
Among the first to vote was Muizzu, 45, who cast his ballot at the Tajuddin school in the capital, Male.
Maldivian Elections Commission Chairman Fuad Thaufeeq urged the 284,663 eligible voters to cast their ballots early.
Photo: AFP
Polling stations across the archipelago would be open for nine-and-a-half hours.
Primarily known as one of the most expensive holiday destinations in South Asia, with pristine white beaches and secluded resorts, the atoll nation has also become a geopolitical hot spot in the Indian Ocean.
Global east-west shipping lanes pass the nation’s chain of 1,192 tiny coral islands, which stretch about 800km across the equator.
Muizzu won the presidential poll in September last year as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, freed last week after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.
This month, as campaigning for the parliamentary elections was in full swing, 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 current parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party of Muizzu’s immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has sought to stymie his efforts to realign the archipelago’s diplomacy.
“Geopolitics is very much in the background as parties campaign for votes in Sunday’s election,” a senior aide of Muizzu said, 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.”
Since Muizzu came to office, lawmakers have blocked three of his nominees to the Cabinet and refused some of his spending proposals.
Splits in all the main political parties, including Muizzu’s People’s National Congress party, are expected to make it hard for any single party to win an outright majority.
However, Muizzu’s prospects received a fillip with the release of his mentor Yameen from house arrest on Thursday.
A court in the capital ordered a retrial in the graft and money laundering cases that sent Yameen to prison after he lost a re-election bid in 2018.
Yameen had also backed closer alignment with Beijing while in power, but his conviction left him unable to contest last year’s presidential poll himself.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other