India's Maldives moment

An opportunity to repair ties must be handled with discretion

No one was surprised when India was among the first countries to welcome the decisive victory of the joint opposition candidate, Ibu Solih, over incumbent president Abdulla Yameen, the China-supported strongman. With over 85 per cent of the island-nation's electorate of 262,135 turning out to vote in the first presidential election since 2013, the result represents a conclusive rejection of Mr Yameen’s authoritarian rule. The question is whether this marks the diminution of Chinese influence in this Indian Ocean archipelago. Maldivian politics has been tumultuous and murky since 2012, when the first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, was forced from