Colombo, Sri Lanka | The Maldives government on Monday acknowledged President Abdulla Yameen's surprise defeat in presidential elections but the Beijing-friendly strongman has yet to publicly concede, raising fears he may not go quietly.

 

Results from Sunday's election released by the electoral commission showed Yameen on 41.7 percent of the vote, well behind the only other candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the joint candidate of the weakened opposition, on 58.3 percent.
 

The final official result will take up to a week to be published.
 

At the last election in 2013, the Supreme Court annulled the result after Yameen trailed former president Mohamed Nasheed, giving Yameen time to forge alliances and win a second round of voting that was postponed twice.
 

Yameen had been expected to triumph on Sunday. His main political rivals are either in prison or in exile and he is widely accused of muzzling the media.

Yameen had yet to comment on Monday. But a foreign ministry statement said Solih, little known before the vote, "won the election".
 

State media, which before the election gave very little coverage to the opposition, also broadcast images of Solih declaring himself the winner.  

Nearly 90 percent of the 262,000 electorate turned out to vote, with some waiting in line for more than five hours.
 

Celebrations broke out across the 1,200-island tropical archipelago popular with wealthy foreign tourists, with opposition supporters waving yellow flags of Solih's Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and dancing in the streets.
 

The US State Department, which had warned of "appropriate measures" if the vote was not free and fair, on Monday called on Yameen to "respect the will of the people".

Regional superpower India, competing with China to retain its influence in the region, was the first to "heartily congratulate" Solih.
 

"This election marks not only the triumph of democratic forces in the Maldives, but also reflects the firm commitment to the values of democracy and the rule of law," the foreign ministry said. 
 

Sri Lanka, home to many Maldivian dissidents, also congratulated him but China, which has loaned Yameen's government hundreds of millions of dollars for an infrastructure blitz, was yet to comment, with Monday being a public holiday.
 

- Media fearful -
 

Solih had the backing of a united opposition trying to oust Yameen but struggled for visibility. The local media was fearful of falling foul of heavy-handed decrees and reporting restrictions.
 

On Sunday night he called on Yameen to concede defeat once the tally showed he had an unassailable lead.
 

"I call on Yameen to respect the will of the people and bring about a peaceful, smooth transfer of power," Solih said on television.
 

He also urged the incumbent immediately to release scores of political prisoners, including former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom -- Yameen's half-brother -- who was jailed along with the Chief Justice and another Supreme Court justice amid accusations of an imminent coup.
 

On the eve of the poll, police raided the campaign headquarters of the MDP and searched the building for several hours in a bid to stop what they called "illegal activities". There were no arrests.
 

Nasheed said the vote would "bring the country back to the democratic path" and Yameen had no option but to concede defeat.
 

"He will not have people around him who will support him to fight on and stay," the exiled former leader told AFP in Colombo.
 

Independent international monitors were barred from the election and only a handful of foreign media were allowed in to cover the poll.

The Asian Network for Free Elections, a foreign monitoring group that was denied access to the Maldives, said the campaign had been heavily tilted in favour of 59-year-old Yameen.
 

The government has used "vaguely worded laws to silence dissent and to intimidate and imprison critics", some of whom have been assaulted and even murdered, according to Human Rights Watch.
 

Sreeram Chaulia, dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in India, said it was hard to "second guess" what Yameen's next move would be.
 

"But any effort now to fix the result in his favour and to deny the opposition victory would really hurt whatever credibility and legitimacy is left of him," Chaulia told AFP.

"He has been authoritarian till now but if he does try to fix the result it will be complete totalitarianism."
 

aj/stu/sm
 

© Agence France-Presse