By Xinhua,
Male : Provisional results released Wednesday morning showed that the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party’s candidate Mohamed Nasheed has been elected as the Indian Ocean archipelago’s new president.
Figures released from the Elections Commission showed that Nasheed bagged 54.25 percent of the votes while the incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom got 45.75 percent in the second round of country’s first-ever multi-party presidential election held on Tuesday.
Election officials said 209,294 people were registered to vote on Tuesday and the turnout was about 86 percent.
However, the counting results have not been verified and the process might take several days before the final result is announced, officials said.
No major violence in connection with Tuesday’s election was reported, but a government building in Male caught fire Tuesday afternoon.
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 run-off came 20 days after the first round which saw Gayoom bagging 40.63 percent of the votes while Nasheed coming second with about 25.09 percent, both failing to secure over 50 percent of the votes needed to get elected.
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).
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.
Of the Maldives’ 1,192 small coral islands scattered across the equator, about 200 are inhabited, while about 85 islands have been developed into resorts.
Thanks to tourism, fishing and shipping, the archipelago’s GDP per capita income was more than 2,000 dollars, the highest among South Asian nations.
However, critics of the incumbent government said 40 percent of Maldivians earned less than a dollar a day and the country is suffering from corruption, housing shortage and drug problem.
The 850 million-U.S.-dollar economy grew by 7.6 percent in 2007and the 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.