Historic Maldives vote heads to second round

MALE (Reuters) - Asia's longest-serving ruler got the most votes in the Maldives' first multiparty presidential poll, but the tally on Thursday showed him headed for a runoff with an opponent he jailed frequently during 30 years in power.

Even before the provisional final count was announced, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's two nearest rivals said they had formed a coalition to defeat him in a second-round vote due within 10 days.

Gayoom, 71, had 40.6 percent of all votes, which represented 85.5 percent turnout of the 208,252 registered voters, Election Commissioner Mohamed Ibrahim said.

In second place with 25.1 percent was Mohamed Nasheed, a former journalist and pro-democracy activist whom Gayoom's government jailed multiple times on what rights groups said were trumped-up charges.

"These are the final preliminary results. A formal announcement will be made at 11:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m. British time)," Ibrahim said in a brief statement.

Former attorney-general Hassan Saeed, who came in third, threw his support in the runoff behind Nasheed, known as Anni.

Nasheed was at the centre of pro-democracy protests in 2004 that led to a heavy-handed crackdown by Gayoom and drew rare international attention to politics in the sleepy Maldives.

The string of 1,192 mostly uninhabited coral atolls 800 km (500 miles) off the tip of India is mostly famous as a tropical idyll of azure waters and Robinson Crusoe-like isolation where a one-night stay can cost thousands of dollars.

OBSERVER PRAISE

Under democratic reforms Gayoom signed into law in August, after years of criticism that he ruled the palm-dotted archipelago like a personal sultanate, a runoff must be held within 10 days if no one gets 50 percent of the vote.

Shortly before the final tally was announced, Gayoom said he considered the results "a significant victory for me."

Polling started on Wednesday and stretched 12 hours past its scheduled end into Thursday, with complaints of vote-rigging and missing voter registrations marring the exercise.

In spite of the problems, the head of the Commonwealth observer mission, former Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur, praised the large turnout and the overall exercise as open.

"Another positive was the high level of transparency and inclusivity. The elections commission has already acknowledged there were problems with voter registration and our observers noticed this as well," he told Reuters.

Arthur's team is due to stay through the runoff.

Diplomats had hoped the election in the Maldives, home to 300,000 Sunni Muslims, would provide an example of a credible democratic poll in a nation which in recent years has seen an increase in fundamentalism.

Gayoom, who won six terms in office by a yes-no vote after parliament made him the only candidate, campaigned on his record of using tourism to transform what was a fishing-based economy into one that has South Asia's highest per capita income.

Tourism directly accounts for 28 percent of GDP, and by some estimates brings in up to 70 percent indirectly.

But critics say those benefits went only to a small group of friends and family of Gayoom, while high rates of child malnutrition, heroin addiction and poverty beset many of the archipelago's residents.

(Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Catherine Evans)