COLOMBO — The Maldives’ incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is in the pole position heading into an election on Saturday, as he seeks to become the first leader of the nascent democracy to win back-to-back races in the strategically located Indian Ocean archipelago.

The soft-spoken Solih — whose pro-India leanings shaped his inaugural term and marked a strategic shift from the pro-China tilt of his predecessor — has been wooing Maldivian voters in constituencies beyond Male, according to South Asia diplomatic sources based in the capital. “Solih has been assiduously working to drum up support in the islands with many new development projects being announced or already underway,” a veteran envoy told Nikkei Asia.

Opinion polls conducted by an independent think tank in the nation show the 61-year-old — known locally as “Ibu” — leading ahead of the first round of voting.

“President Solih remains the most popular candidate” in a field of eight contestants, said the Baani Center for International Policy in a late-August assessment of voter sentiment. But it cautioned against predicting a winner in the preliminary round since 53% of poll respondents were “undecided.”

The political tailwind for Solih is due partly to the list of rivals — a record in itself, as the eight candidates from five political parties and three independents comprise the largest field to vie for the presidency since the Maldives held its first multiparty presidential election in late 2008.

Absent are two formidable opponents who could have mounted a stiff challenge had they run: former President Abdulla Yameen, in jail for accepting bribes and money laundering during his term that preceded Solih’s; and parliament speaker and former President Mohamed Nasheed, an erstwhile Solih ally who parted ways this year over political differences.

Maldives President Solih’s administration has been friendly toward India, breaking from his predecessor’s pro-China stance.   © Reuters

Most observers consider the only serious challenger to be Male mayor Mohamed Muizzu, whose People’s National Congress party and Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives formed the main opposition to the Solih administration. The 45-year-old Muizzu, a British-educated civil engineer, is relying largely on his record as a technocrat who served in two previous governments as minister in charge of housing, environment and infrastructure.

Muizzu is also tapping into Yameen’s popularity to try to deprive Solih of the outright majority he needs in the first round to secure the presidency. If successful, this would force a second round in late September.

Polls indicate that Muizzu is “riding on the support base of President Yameen [and] is the leading challenger to the incumbent,” Ahmed Shaheed, former Maldivian foreign minister, told Nikkei Asia. “A low voter turnout could possibly produce a first-round win for President Solih … [but] a high turnout that is comparable to previous elections is likely to force a runoff between Solih and Muizzu.”

Like electoral contests in many other developing countries, the leading candidates are big on economic promises. “Both [candidates] appear to be committed to outbidding each other in pledging state handouts and unfeasible local and [national] infrastructure projects,” added Shaheed, currently a law professor at the University of Essex in the U.K. “Accountability and credibility have not featured as priorities for any of the candidates in the contest.” There are 282,395 registered voters in the nation of 1,200 islands.

The promise of such economic carrots has not been lost on experts, who worry that the expense will worsen the country’s ballooning public debt — now over 110% of GDP in the $6.5 billion economy.

“Lack of regard for fiscal responsibility as reflected in the campaign pledges is a key concern,” said Fazeel Najeeb, former governor of the Maldives Monetary Authority, the central bank. “None of the candidates appears least concerned about the pile of sovereign debt [and] the looming maturity of bonds in the range of a billion dollars.”

The Solih administration has benefited from Indian largesse, helping it cope with economic headwinds and pursue development projects. New Delhi has supported the Maldives through an estimated $2.7 billion in grants, concessional loans and loans since Solih began his term, marking the return of the South Asian powerhouse after it lost influence during the pro-China administration of Yameen.

Both India and China are courting the Maldives as part of their geopolitical contest for influence in a stretch of the Indian Ocean that straddles busy shipping routes.

Solih’s triumph over Yameen during the last presidential election in September 2018 was meant to usher in a new democratic culture, given the authoritarian grip of the Yameen presidency. But the current election campaign has raised questions about the incumbent’s commitment to a free and open political atmosphere.

“The use of power in dispersing protesters — often by police officers in full riot gear — as well as the arrests and intimidation of opposition supporters, has been highly concerning,” said Sara Naseem, communications and advocacy manager of Transparency Maldives, the local chapter of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

But when compared with the previous political environment, she added, it is “not as volatile” and “the past five years too has seen relative political calm.”