Maldivian presidential election: India is not a major poll issue this time, but still makes presence felt

With only hours and days left before campaigning closes for the Maldivian presidential poll slated for Saturday, 9 September, much of the campaigns from all sides have remained mostly focused on domestic issues, that too development-centric as different from democracy-oriented, as used to be the case in the three past-previous polls, respectively in 2008, 2013 and 2018. The credit for keeping it this way should go to incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who, through his five years in office and the past months of direct campaigning, both political and electoral, where he was not inaugurating a social or physical infrastructure scheme,…