By Tara Kartha
From the article:
Voters are a smarter lot than most venal politicians think. After a period of emergency, jailing of opposition leaders, and muzzling of a liberal press, the voting public in the Maldives have ousted President Abdulla Yameen with a huge majority. The prevailing hope is that the change to lawmaker Ibrahim Mohamed Solih will bring some stability into a country that depends so heavily on tourism to keep its home fires burning.
Initial reports suggest a more than 80 percent turn out across the country, indicating the depth of resentment against the sitting president. Messages of congratulations from major countries including the United States and India among others have already begun to pour in preventing Yameen from executing any attempt to roll back the people's verdict. After all, it was only in June that the Election Commission declared former president Mohamed Nasheed ineligible to run for president, despite his winning the primaries with 43,922 of the 44,011 votes cast. In August, the presidential spokesman was attempting to muddy the waters by warning of a plot to unseat the president. And just prior to polling, The Hindureported a police raid on Opposition headquarters which raised fears that the polls would be rigged. In the event, that raid probably strengthened voters resolve to be out of the sorry mess that the Maldives has been ever since political instability began in 2015, with Nasheed was convicted of terrorism charges in what most saw as a mock-up trial, and dissenting political leaders and Supreme Court judges were thrown into jail.
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There is no doubt that the inspiration and influence behind the new government will be Nasheed, who has of late been appealing to India and the US to intervene in his troubled country. He has also accused China of ‘colonising” his country, a charge that has some basis given the figures thrown up by different studies. One by the Centre for Global Development and another by Gateway House underlines that massive Maldivian debt to China — estimated at $1.5 billion — is endangering democracy. Certainly, Yameen had become increasingly dictatorial after his cosying up to Beijing.
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