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Opposition presidential candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, a long-time but little-known legislator in the Maldives, said victory Monday morning in a controversial election widely considered a referendum on the country's young democracy. ;island.
Solih's victory, announced at his party's campaign headquarters in Male, was unexpected. The opposition feared that the elections would be rigged in favor of strong president Yameen Abdul Gayoom, whose first term was marked by the crackdown on political rivals, courts and the media.
Supporters draped in the Maldivian flag invaded the streets, kissing, applauding and honking to celebrate Solih's victory. According to the website of the independent newspaper mihaaru.com, it won 58.3 percent of the vote, with nearly 97.5 percent of votes counted shortly after midnight on Monday. Electoral Observatory Transparency Maldives tweeted that Solih had won "by a decisive margin".
Yameen's campaign did not cash the race and no one from the campaign could be immediately contacted for comment.
A spokesman for the Maldives Electoral Commission said the official results would not be announced until one week ago, the period reserved for parties to challenge the results in court.
Solih, surrounded by thousands of his followers, called for calm until the commission announced the results.
"I would like to say to President Yameen, people have spoken, please accept defeat," said Solih, adding that he had spoken to the Maldivian police, "with the people" and that he had agreed the result.
In his victory speech, Solih, among the founders of the main opposition party, the Maldivian Democratic Party, described the election results as "a moment of happiness, hope and history", adding that he did not think the electoral process was transparent.
According to Hamid Abdul Gafoor, opposition spokesman and former Maldivian MP, a police operation led by Solih's campaign office the day before the election was perceived by the opposition as a worrying sign of re-election from Yameen. in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Renowned for its white sand beaches and luxury resorts, the Yameen Maldives have experienced economic growth and longer life expectancy, according to the World Bank. But Yameen's critics, including Solih, said he had systematically reduced democratic freedoms.
Few foreign media organizations were allowed to cover the elections and warnings were issued that the Maldives were returning to an autocratic regime, only ten years after gaining access to democracy.
Yameen used his first term to consolidate power, jailing opponents, including his half-brother, a former president and two Supreme Court justices.
In February, Yameen declared the state of emergency, suspended the constitution and ordered the troops to storm the Supreme Court and arrest judges and other rivals for avoid indictment.
The European Union said it did not send election observers because the Maldives did not meet basic monitoring requirements. The United States had threatened to punish the Maldivian authorities if the elections were not free and fair.
Opposition supporters in the Maldives and neighboring Sri Lanka, where ex-president Mohamed Nasheed lives in exile, denounced Saturday's descent as a naked attempt to vote for Yameen.
Despite the turmoil, voters went to the polls Sunday, standing in long lines in the rain and at high temperatures, to vote.
More than 260,000 of the Maldivian's 400,000 people were eligible to vote in approximately 400 polling stations across the 1,200 islands of the Indian Ocean archipelago. Voters also lined up in Malaysia, the United Kingdom, India and Sri Lanka, where opposition had encouraged Maldivians abroad to participate.
