COLOMBO — Maldivian voters have raised the geopolitical stakes for the second and final round of the presidential election on Sept. 30, having given pro-China opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu a commanding lead over India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the first round on Saturday.

Muizzu performed much better, and Solih far worse, than analysts had anticipated and polls predicted. Citizens gave the former — the mayor of the capital, Male, and candidate of the People’s National Congress (PNC) — 46% of the vote. This secured his spot in the final runoff, in which the winner must get over 50% of the votes.

Solih received just 39% of the initial votes despite having led the pack of eight candidates in opinion polling before election day. The result dashed the high expectations of insiders in the president’s office and his ruling Maldivian Democratic Party, some of whom had told Nikkei Asia that Solih would cruise to reelection in the first round.

Saturday’s outcome also surely reverberated in New Delhi and Beijing, with South Asian diplomatic sources saying it would compel each government to prepare for a new diplomatic chapter in the Maldives.

“Once again Asian geopolitics has embraced the Maldivian elections,” said George Cooke, a former Sri Lanka diplomat and international relations specialist at Colombo University. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “was at the presidential [inauguration] in 2018, and might have very likely wanted to return in 2023,” he said. But with Solih trailing his chief opponent in the first round, Cooke said it looks like “the victory has gone to China.”

The small nation of 1,200 islands is known for its high-end tourist resorts. But it also straddles busy shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, making it a focus of a regional contest for influence.

Muizzu’s success was built on votes drawn from the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) of former President Abdulla Yameen, who is currently serving an 11-year prison term for accepting bribes and money laundering during his term, which preceded Solih’s. An alliance of the PPM and Muizzu’s PNC has been the main opposition force during Solih’s five-year first term.

During his presidency from 2013 to 2018, Yameen tilted toward China and openly criticized India. This upended diplomatic norms in a country generally regarded as part of India’s sphere.

The change in tone paved the way for Beijing to pump in loans and financing for multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects while turning a blind eye to Yameen’s authoritarian style.

But Solih capitalized on growing public discontent in the 2018 election, beating Yameen. The soft-spoken 61-year-old went on to restore the ties the Maldives had enjoyed with India, marked by his signature “India first” policy. New Delhi reciprocated by serving up its own multimillion-dollar infrastructure financing and security assistance.

By embracing India so tightly, however, Solih created an opportunity for Muizzu to exploit on the campaign trail. The 45-year-old British-educated civil engineer and former cabinet minister of housing, environment and infrastructure took aim at the Indian military contingent stationed in the Maldives. This touched on fears of dominance by the “world’s largest democracy” in South Asia’s smallest one.

Much like Yameen, who championed an “India Out” campaign in recent years, Muizzu courted voters by promising to contain the expanding Indian footprint.

A woman casts her vote at a polling station during the Maldives’ presidential election on Sept. 9.   © Reuters

This has brought Yameen back into the political fray even from behind bars. Sensing an anti-Indian mood, Yameen has reached out to the electorate through his lawyer, urging voters to support Muizzu to “get rid of the foreign military presence and make the country independent,” according to local media reports.

Still, after the 219,843 votes cast on Saturday were crunched, seasoned analysts were stunned by just how well all this had worked for Muizzu.

“PPM has increased its vote share by 5%, which is remarkable given Solih had all the advantages of being the incumbent and Muizzu didn’t have much time to campaign,” said Azim Zahir, a Maldivian political scientists at the Perth-based University of Western Australia.

This election also contrasted sharply with the last one in terms of turnout.

In 2018, nearly 90% of registered voters participated, with 134,705 votes — nearly 60% — going to Solih in a supermajority landslide. Yameen, who was expecting to win, ended up with only 96,052 votes in what many analysts termed a “shock defeat” for the incumbent.

This time, Yameen’s proxy, Muizzu, won 101,613 votes to Solih’s 86,151 in the first round, while turnout dropped to 80%, the lowest since the Maldives’ first multiparty elections in 2008.

“Overall, this is a massive blow to Solih,” said Zahir, also the author of “Islam and Democracy in the Maldives: Interrogating Reformist Islam’s Role in Politics.”

Now Solih’s camp has its work cut out to woo supporters of the candidates who didn’t make the cut. The president could also hope to pull in voters who sat out the first round.

“Either way,” Solih told reporters on Sunday, “we have to ally with others.”

According to local media, the president attributed his loss of support to “the presence of unforeseen factors,” which he did not spell out.