Maldives holds run-off presidential election
28/10/2008 16:18
The run-off presidential election began this morning in the tiny Indian
Ocean archipelago of the Maldives, which will see the incumbent President
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom competes with the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party's
Mohamed Nasheed.
Elections officials said 209,332 people have been registered
to vote in 401 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.
They said the voting started at 9 a.m. (0400 GMT) and as of 9: 30 a.m.
(0430 GMT0 the voting went well.
Around 2,400 observers, including those from
the European Union and the Commonwealth, are observing the election.
The
run-off came 20 days after the first round which saw Gayoom bagging 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.
Xinhua
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