![\"Maldives](\"https:\/\/c.ndtvimg.com\/2024-03\/fn3c9kgo_maldives-president-mohamed-muizzu-ani_625x300_06_March_24.jpeg\"\/ "\\"Maldives")
<\/div>\nThis month, he awarded high-profile infra contracts to Chinese state-owned companies<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Mali, Maldives: <\/b><\/p>\n
The Maldives votes Sunday in a parliamentary election likely to test President Mohamed Muizzu’s tilt towards China and away from India, the luxury tourism hotspot’s traditional benefactor.<\/p>\n
Primarily known as one of the most expensive holiday destinations in South Asia, with pristine white beaches and secluded resorts, the strategic Indian Ocean island nation has also become a geopolitical hotspot.<\/p>\n
Global east-west shipping lanes pass the nation’s chain of 1,192 tiny coral islands, stretching around 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator.<\/p>\n
President Mohamed Muizzu, 45, won last September’s presidential poll as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, this week freed after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.<\/p>\n
This month, he awarded high-profile infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies as campaigning for the parliamentary elections was in full swing.<\/p>\n
His administration is also in the process of sending home a garrison of 89 Indian troops that operate reconnaissance aircraft gifted by New Delhi to patrol the vast maritime borders of the archipelago.<\/p>\n
The current parliament, dominated by the pro-India Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of his immediate predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, has sought to stymie his efforts to realign the archipelago’s diplomacy.<\/p>\n
“Geopolitics is very much in the background as parties campaign for votes in Sunday’s election,” a senior aide of Muizzu told AFP, asking not to be named.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Since Muizzu came to office, lawmakers have blocked three of his nominees to the cabinet and refused some of his spending proposals.<\/p>\n
Splits in all the main political parties, including Muizzu’s People’s National Congress (PNC), are expected to make it hard for any single party to win a majority.<\/p>\n
But Muizzu’s prospects this week received a fillip with the release of his mentor Yameen from house arrest this week.<\/p>\n
A court in the capital Male ordered a retrial in the graft and money laundering cases that saw Yameen sent to prison after he lost a re-election bid in 2018.<\/p>\n
Yameen had also backed closer alignment with Beijing while in power but his conviction left him unable to contest last year’s presidential poll on his own.<\/p>\n
He instead put forward Muizzu as a proxy, and after leaving the High Court on Thursday, Yameen vowed to continue the running anti-India campaign that helped his ally to victory.<\/p>\n
Around 285,000 Maldivians are eligible to vote on Sunday, with results likely by early the next day.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n