MALE: The president-elect of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, has marked his victory with a pledge to end foreign military presence in his small but strategically placed atoll nation.

Muizzu, addressing his first public rally after winning Saturday’s runoff election, stopped short of naming India, the only foreign power with a military deployment in the archipelago.

He won an “India-out” campaign after New Delhi placed a small unit of security personnel to operate four reconnaissance aircraft gifted to the Maldives to patrol its vast maritime territory.

“We will be sending back military forces based in the Maldives according to law, and for sure we will do that accordingly,” Muizzu said at the rally in the capital Male on Mon­day night.

“The people who brou­ght... military forces don’t want to send them back, but the people of the Mal­dives have decided,” he said.

Outgoing President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had realigned the nation’s relations with India, after his predecessor Abdulla Yameen moved the Maldives into Beijing’s orbit, borrowing heavily from China for infrastructure projects.

Muizzu, 45, is a proxy of Yameen who was barred from last month’s election because of his criminal conviction for corruption.

Within hours of his victory, Muizzu secured the release of Yameen, who was serving an 11-year jail sentence at the high-security Maafushi prison, and transferred him to house arrest in Male.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2023