New era dawns in Maldives

Ex-political prisoner Mohamed “Anni” Nasheed wins Presidential Poll:

MALE: A former political prisoner swept to victory in the Maldives’ first democratic presidential election unseating Asia’s longest-serving leader and sparking scenes of celebration on yesterday.

Supporters of Mohamed “Anni” Nasheed hugged and drove around the capital of the Indian Ocean atoll nation waving yellow flags representing his party as the scale of his victory became clear.

The election commission said that with all votes counted from Tuesday’s watershed poll, Nasheed had won 54.21 percent to 45.79 percent for incumbent leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Conceding defeat, Gayoom said he would give his “full support and cooperation” to Nasheed taking power. In a television address Nasheed, 41, thanked the outgoing president for accepting the people’s verdict, calling it “an example of democracy”.

The Maldives, a liberal Sunni Muslim nation of 1,192 coral islands and some 300,000 people, has never held multi-party elections. Gayoom, 71, has ruled the tourist paradise islands unchallenged since 1978 and over a period of six years repeatedly jailed Nasheed, a former Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience”.

Until a few years ago, anyone declaring an intention to seek high office would be banished to an uninhabited island.

Thousands of Nasheed supporters drove around the capital Male waving their yellow flags as others embraced at a beachfront promenade where young people had camped for days to drum up support for his campaign.

“This is spontaneous joy,” said one, Aishath Aniya.

Fathimath Niusha, a 27-year-old school teacher, said she was thrilled with the change of leadership.

“I want to see how it will be under a new president,” Niusha said. “All my life, it had been under Gayoom.”

Gayoom had failed to win an outright victory in the first round of voting three weeks ago, prompting a run-off against the charismatic Nasheed.

Nasheed, a political moderate, has promised to root out corruption, improve health care and communications to remote islands, cut state spending and turn the lavish presidential palace into the first university in the country.

The elections followed Gayoom’s promise to bring political freedoms to the archipelago in the wake of pro-democracy protests and mounting international pressure.

Despite its popularity as an exotic holiday destination for the rich, the Maldives is beset with corruption, an acute housing shortage and a serious drug problem said to affect one in three youngsters. In the cramped island capital Male, most voters said they simply wanted to see a new face in charge.

Local journalist Ibrahim Mohamed, 20, said he campaigned for two years to topple Gayoom as young people were fed up with his autocratic rule.

“It is really the young people who made this happen,” Mohamed said. “I was arrested and locked up three times in the past two years. I was determined to work for a change.”

“I want a peaceful transition,” Nasheed told reporters during a visit to a mosque as results were coming in. “I want my supporters to be calm.” AFP