INSIGHT: SOUTH ASIA - Maldivian president-elect seeks to balance influences of

of the Maldives’s capital city of Malé, has pledged to • Muizzu pledged to remove Indian troops from the make the country more transparent and tilt away from Maldives if elected and to rebalance the country's New Delhi and towards Beijing. [...] the leader of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), secured victory with 54 per cent of the vote IMPLICATIONS in a second-round run-off against the incumbent The election result may challenge the country’s president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. [...] The Maldives is tainted by three • Muizzu unexpectedly emerged as the frontrunner in decades of authoritarian rule that formally ended in the initial round of voting on September 9, claiming 2008 with the country's first democratic election. [...] For example, The country’s most pressing concern remains the in 2016, government authorities raided the offices influences of India and China on the Maldives's of local journalists and human rights NGOs after future. [...] The Maldives, home to approximately half collaborative, multi-party effort to protect the country’s a million people, holds strategic significance as it is constitution, preserve the separation of powers, and situated along vital shipping routes in the Indian Ocean.