Pro-Indian President Solih loses elections in the Maldives to pro-China Moizu

Opposition leader Mohamed Moiso won the presidential elections in the Maldives on Saturday against incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. Maldivian media reported this. Mwizo received 53.9 percent of the total votes in the second round of elections in which the two remaining candidates competed.

Muizzu’s profits are likely to bring the Maldives back into Chinese spheres of influence in the coming years. China had 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 Abdulla Yameen. China subsequently implemented many infrastructure projects, but the archipelago also currently has debts of no less than $1.4 billion (1.3 billion euros) to the country of President Xi Jinping.

In 2018, Solih surprisingly won the previous presidential election. Relations with India subsequently improved, relations with China deteriorated, but the Maldives then entered into almost the same debt with India. This is one of the reasons why Al-Muazi, who is seen as a puppet of the right and who was imprisoned on corruption charges, had a chance to win.
The archipelago, with a population of about 550,000, is interesting to 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.