Mohamed Muizzu has emerged victorious, bagging 54 percent of the vote in the second round of Maldives’ presidential elections. The development is widely perceived as a win for Beijing and a setback for New Delhi. So, what does the new Muizzu era mean for the China-India competition in the region and for Mauritius?

The shifting sands in Maldives

Mohamed Muizzu, the candidate of the opposition PPM-PNC coalition, has emerged victorious, bagging 54 percent of the vote in the second round of the Presidential elections in the Maldives. Muizzu’s victory brings to an end the rule of Ibrahim Solih and his MDP party, which has ruled the country since 2018. Muizzu’s win has been widely interpreted as a win for China and a setback for India in a country where political parties have been divided on whether to get closer to Beijing or New Delhi.

When it comes to Maldivian politics, this has been going on for some time now with the country drifting from one camp to the other. When it became independent in 1965, Maldives was economically dependent on Sri Lanka for everything from banking to its exports of dried fish. However, it was India, under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, that prised Maldives out of Colombo’s sphere, promising help in economic diversification, security and infrastructure. Under the 1978-2008 rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, relations between New Delhi and Malé soared, culminating in the 1988 “operation cactus” episode, when the Indian navy intercepted a ship carrying militants from the Tamil nationalist group PLOTE that were looking to overthrow the Gayoom government in a coup in return for promises of turning the Maldives into a safe haven for PLOTE activities directed against Colombo and their Tamil nationalist rivals, the LTTE.

During the Gayoom years, it was a given that New Delhi was Maldives’ main international partner and security guarantor. However, towards the end of this period, Malé also began courting Chinese investment. Between 1985 and 2001 Chinese companies had signed agreements worth $46.37 million with their Maldivian counterparts, eventually paving the way for the opening of a Chinese embassy in Maldives and a Maldivian embassy in Beijing. During that time, Mohamed Nasheed’s MDP criticised what it called the Gayoom government’s “cozying up to China”. Eventually in 2008 , the Gayoom regime fell, accused by Nasheed’s MDP of financial mismanagement – the country’s debt had reached 60 percent of GDP at the time – with the new Nasheed administration declaring that it would pursue an “India First” foreign policy.

It wasn’t long before Nasheed too got into trouble. His government only saw the debt situation get worse and his harsh crackdowns on opposition protests saw the MDP lose its popularity. As he did to his predecessor, Nasheed was now also accused of tilting too far in the direction of one big power, this time New Delhi. The opposition pointed to a helicopter gifted by India in 2009, a defence cooperation agreement for joint surveillance and patrols in the Indian Ocean, and setting up a network of 26 coastal radars. In 2010 the “GMR affair” broke when an Indian corporation (GMR) looking to upgrade Malé’s international airport was embroiled in a legal dispute when it looked to impose a development fee on Maldivian travellers. When Nasheed’s government backed GMR, this only intensified protests ending in 2013 when Nasheed quit as President and took shelter in the Indian High Commission, before eventually ending up in Sri Lanka.

Ibrahim Solih brought Maldives, much closer to India and distanced the country from China with his «India First» policy.

The Yameen and Solih years

The rise of the PPM’s Abdulla Yameen in 2013 saw the country dump Nasheed’s old “India First” policy and tilt towards China. In 2011 Maldives was no longer classified as a Least Developed Country (LDC), which meant that any infrastructure that the government planned to build could not be financed through international aid but would have to be financed by bilateral commercial lending. For Yameen, Beijing’s deep pockets seemed to fit the bill. In 2014, Maldives welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and signed up to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a massive drive to build strategic and economic infrastructure across Eurasia and Africa – and expressed Maldives’ willingness to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2017 with the Asian giant to boost the country’s fish exports.

Yameen also discussed the possibility of China establishing a Joint Ocean Observation Centre in the country and in return, Beijing ploughed Maldives with infrastructure spending. This included the China-Maldives friendship bridge connecting the main island of Malé with another island, Hulhumalé, to ease overcrowding in Malé city by encouraging residents to move there; the expansion of Malé’s international airport by a Chinese firm after the Yameen government tore up the old GMR contract, and leasing the island of Feydhoo Finolhu to Chinese developers to build tourism infrastructure. By 2018, Yameen had borrowed $1.5 billion from China ($600 million borrowed directly by the government and $900 million in terms of sovereign guarantees by the government).

Faced with growing protests by the opposition MDP, Yameen responded by a harsh crackdown of his own, and in 2018, declared a state of emergency in response to a court order to release political prisoners. As India expressed concerns over the heavy handed-ness against the pro-India MDP, in 2018, Yameen asked India to withdraw two Dhruv helicopters it had given Maldives. As Nasheed called for the Indian government to intervene, China’s semiofficial GlobalTimes responded with a warning that “if India one-sidedly sends troops to the Maldives, China will take action to stop New Delhi. India should not underestimate China’s opposition to unilateral military intervention”.

In the end, it was the 2018 election that ejected Yameen and brought the MDP back to power. This time under Ibrahim Solih. Previous president Nasheed was ineligible to contest at the time due to a previous terrorism conviction. Once in power, Solih mirrored the previous 2008-2013 Nasheed government’s foreign policy by declaring that he too would follow an “India First” policy. Under Solih, key Yameen era moves, such as projects under the BRI and the FTA with China, were shelved.

Mohamed Muizzu, the candidate of the PPM-PNC bloc, has won the presidency in the Maldives, ousting the MDP government headed by Ibrahim Solih.

This time, it was New Delhi’s turn to be generous; announcing a $1.4 billion in a line of credit and budget support to Maldives, loans for defence spending, partly financing a $500 million bridge connecting Malé to the islands of Villingili, Gulhifahu (where a port was promised), and Thilafushi, which was planned to be turned into an industrial zone. By mid-2021, the Indian High Commissioner to the Maldives could boast that whereas India had 45 active projects in the Maldives, China was left with only one.

It was not long before the PPM-PNC opposition countered with its “India Out” campaign, accusing the Solih government of compromising Maldivian sovereignty and paving the way for an Indian military presence in the country. The opposition pointed to three main issues: first, was the beginning of hydrographic surveys undertaken by India in Maldivian waters in January 2021; a deal finalized in 2020 for India to give a Dornier plane manned by 25 Indian personnel, and a 2021 deal over the Uthuru Thilafalhu (UTF) where India proposed setting up a coastguard harbour and dockyard, and maintain it for 15 years. But this was criticised by the opposition as an Indian military base being built there. In the end, the “India Out” campaign focused on the 75 unarmed Indian military personnel to be stationed to operate the Dornier plane and two helicopters.

By April 2022 the Solih government was sufficiently rattled to outlaw the ‘India Out’ campaign by a presidential decree saying that it harmed ties with India, with the opposition accusing Solih of violating freedom of speech. As Solih was being hammered on his tilt towards New Delhi, his government also struggled, as despite announcing a raft of infrastructure projects since coming to power, none of the major ones were completed for Solih to show his supporters. That the Solih government was in serious trouble was evident in April 2021 when during local government elections for the Malé City Council (where 40 percent of Maldives’ total population lives), the opposition PPM-PNC walked away with a victory, with Muizzu coming in as Malé City’s mayor.

Internal troubles

While the election result can be analysed in terms of the perennial pendulum swing of Maldivian foreign policy between India and China, internal factors too had a large role to play in handing Muizzu the victory. Solih’s MDP was a house divided against itself. Despite handpicking Solih to run as the MDP’s Presidential candidate in the 2018 elections, it was not long before Nasheed wanted to wrest back control of the MDP. From his post as parliamentary speaker, Nasheed and his supporters launched broadsides against the Solih government, accusing it of corruption and Nasheed demanding that the Solih government announce a referendum to switch Maldives’ political system from a presidential to a parliamentary one. Nasheed also stated that he wanted to contest the 2023 presidential election as the MDP candidate, directly challenging Solih’s grip on the party. That was the first time in Maldives’ history that a sitting president was being challenged from within his own party.

However, in January this year, Nasheed failed to win over his party in a Presidential primary, leading Nasheed’s supporters to break away from the MDP to launch their own party ‘The Democrats’ and fielding their own candidate in the election. After the loss of the Malé City elections, the pro-India MDP splintering into two parties could only spell more trouble from New Delhi’s vantage point. When the first round of the Presidential elections ended with Muizzu topping the list, with Solih coming second and the pro-Nasheed candidate, Ilyas Labeeb coming in third, it was expected that the bitterly divided pro-India camp headed by Solih and Nasheed would come together to keep the PPM-PNC out. That did not happen. Both Solih and Nasheed could not agree to come together in the second round.

The PPM-PNC bloc conducted a nationalist campaign calling for the downgrading of Maldives’ growing security relationship with India.

And after the election, the wounds are still raw: Solih has insisted that he will not back a transition to a parliamentary system and said that most MDP members opposed allowing Nasheed back into the party. Last Monday, when Nasheed wanted to pass a motion in parliament on a referendum on the parliamentary system, most MDP members showed him up by not coming for the session. With only 15 MPs (mostly Nasheed supporters) bothering to show up, Nasheed had to wrap the session because of a lack of quorum. All this is to say that it will be some time before the MDP and its splinter groups come together, and that looks increasingly uncertain the longer the pro-India camp remains split between Solih and Nasheed.

This is not to say that Muizzu’s newly elected government won’t face many of the same problems. Muizzu himself was handpicked by Yameen after the latter’s conviction on corruption and money laundering made him ineligible for running; a repetition of the 2018 arrangement between Solih and Nasheed that caused problems later on. How this government fares will depend on how successfully Muizzu heads the government as president while dealing with Yameen in the background.

India and Mauritius

The change in government in Maldives is just the latest bit of bad news for India. In 2018, its deal with the Danny Faure-led government in Seychelles to build a $550 million base on Assumption Island fell through due to opposition led by Wavel Ramkalawan. Now with Ramkalawan in government there, New Delhi has been unsuccessful so far in trying to revive that deal. Now with Muizzu in Maldives pledging during his campaign to review defence agreements signed with New Delhi and looking to take Malé back towards Beijing, Agalega in Mauritius seems to remain as the only bright spot left for New Delhi after its 2015 push to deepen ties in the region and counter Beijing. For Mauritius, the change in regime in Malé does not portend any great changes; both states have limited economic ties – aside from some tourism and banking investments from Mauritius into Maldives. Efforts to deepen those ties in recent years, such as Mauritius proposing in April 2013 that Maldives join the Indian Ocean Commission or tourism-sharing proposals for Mauritius to tap into the bigger and higher-end tourism market in Maldives, have not yielded much. While the PPM-PNC has been vocal about its opposition to the International Tribunal Law of the Sea (ITLOS) dividing a contested 95,000 square kilometre strip of ocean between the two states, it has done so primarily to hammer the Solih government (just as Nasheed did). It’s unlikely that the new Maldivian government would choose to walk into an international legal quagmire by refusing to recognize or violating a legally binding ITLOS decision.

From Mauritius ’ perspective, the problem is that a Muizzu-led government might be less amenable to reaching a deal on settling a simmering dispute over an overlap in the continental shelf claimed by both states in the Northern Chagos. In April 2022, Mauritius formally submitted a claim over a 23,400-square-kilometre at the UN’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). Solih’s 2022 recognition of Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos Islands – reversing the previously ambiguous position that Mauritius and the UK settle their dispute first before dealing with Malé – was to open the door to just such a possibility. Now with Solih gone, Mauritius may have to wait a while before it can hope to cut a deal.