Following the second round of the Presidential race held in the Maldives on 30th September 2023, with two leading candidates going head to head, the citizens of the country have finally decided on the next president for the nation.
PSM News
The first round of the Presidential race saw eight different candidates competing, however, as many predicted, the final polls came out showing the leading candidate to be Dr. Mohamed Muizzu from the coalition between the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and Peoples National Congress (PNC) competing against the Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) candidate and the current President of the nation Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.
As the voting polls closed down at 5 pm across all islands of the Maldives, the final decision followed soon after as the PPM/PNC candidate Dr Muizzu won a majority of the votes, leading to the final announcement early 30th September night.
At the end of the ballot counts, Dr Muizzu took home 53.78 percent of the votes with 126,499 votes while the opponent Solih won 46.22 percent with 108,735 votes. With this, Dr Muizzu, the current Mayor of the Male’ City council is going to be elected as the eighth President of the Maldives on November 2023.
This is the second major milestone for Dr. Muizzu, who has already made his mark in the Maldives in 2021 by becoming the first Male’ City Council mayor from PPM. Prior to this appointment, Dr Muizzu also served as the Minister of Housing and Environment in 2012, keeping the same position in the Government in 2018 with the modification to the title - Minister of Housing and Infrastructure.
With a background in engineering with his bachelor and master's degrees in Civil Engineering at the University of London and later acquiring his PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, UK, aside from his political career in the Maldives, Dr Muizzu is also one of the most well-respected engineering professionals in the Maldives who has overseen a number of key building projects in the country. Some of the key projects overseen by Dr Muizzu include the famous China-Maldives friendship bridge that connects the Male’, Hulhule’ and Hulhumale’, the development of Rasfannu Beach, the King Salman Grand Mosque, and the remodelling of the Sultan Park.
