By Xinhua,
Male : The run-off presidential election in the Indian archipelago of the Maldives went on peacefully on Tuesday with no major violence being reported, elections officials said.
The incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is competing with the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party’s (MDP) Mohamed Nasheed in the election.
Election officials said 209,294 people were registered to vote in 403 polling stations in the country which consists of 1,192 small islands scattered across 800 km of the Indian Ocean neighboring India and Sri Lanka.
The voting booths opened at 9 a.m. (0400 GMT) and were scheduled to be closed at 8 p.m. (1500 GMT). But election officials said that as of 9:30 p.m. local time (1630 GMT), some polling station remained open as some voters were still lining up to vote.
Around 2,400 observers, including those from the European Union and the Commonwealth, are observing the election.
Only one polling box with 218 votes have been processed, which showed that Nasheed bagging 61.11 percent of the votes while Gayoom getting 38.82 percent.
No major violence in connection with the election has been reported, but a government building in Male caught fire in the afternoon.
A large fire broke out at a medical store of the government-owned State Trading Organization at around 1:10 p.m. (0810 GMT) and police officers were still working to put out the fire in the evening.
Supporters of the MDP suspected the fire might be a work of the government to divert attention from the election, but initial investigation showed that it was caused by a short circuit.
The counting will start soon after the closing of the polling stations with preliminary results expected on Wednesday.
The run-off came 20 days after the first round which saw Gayoombagging 40.63 percent of the total 176,567 valid votes, but he failed to secure more than 50 percent of the votes needed to get elected in the country’s first-ever multi-party presidential election.
Gayoom, who has been the president since November 1978, ran for the presidency for the 7th time representing the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP or the Maldivian People’s Party).
Nasheed came second with 44,293 votes or 25.09 percent of the total.
The remaining votes were divided among the other four candidates: the independent candidate Hassan Saeed, the Jumhooree Party’s Qasim Ibrahim, the Islamic Democratic Party’s Umar Naseer and the Social Liberal Party’s Ibrahim Ismail.
According to the new constitution ratified by Gayoom in August, the president shall be elected directly by the people and over 50 percent of the votes are needed to be elected.
If no candidate obtains such a majority, a run-off election must be held within 21 days after the first election. It will be contested by the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes in the first election.
Supported by tourism, fishing and shipping, the 850 million-U.S.-dollar economy grew by 7.6 percent in 2007 and the Maldivian government expects the economy to grow by 8.3 percent for 2008.
However, the IMF said the economic growth would slow to 6.5 percent in 2008 and its inflation would double to around 15 percent.