The Local Council and Women's Development Committee Elections of 2020, delayed by one year to 2021 with the onset of Covid-19, was held on Saturday and has concluded with surprising interim results. The elections were a critical milestone, measuring the mettle of main-ruling party MDP against the frantic political efforts of a fractured opposition three years into President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's administration. They also represented the election of the Maldives' strongest, most autonomous councils for local governance across the country.

Additionally, Saturday's elections were notable as a historic elections for women leaders in the Maldives. This is the first time an election will be held in the Maldives with a certain percentage of seats reserved for women candidates. As such, 33 percent of seats from Local Councils will be reserved for women, including 370 island council seats and 14 seats from city councils.

However, as voting progressed across the Maldives, Sri Lanka and India on Saturday, worries surfaced technical difficulties and of low voter turnout due to the prevailing effects of Covid-19. Further, the dissatisfaction of citizens, who seemed generally less enthused than usual around this year's elections, also culminated in thousands of voters choosing to boycott the elections by refusing to vote and casting invalid ballots. Out of the 273,128 citizens are eligible to vote in the polls, 5,134 were first time voters, which represented the highest number of new voters to be eligible to vote in an election so far.

As verified results of Saturday's vote begin to trickle in, so do some disheartening truths about the state of democracy and political affairs in the Maldives. The unwillingness of citizens to associate with and participate in the democratic process can be rightfully chalked down to a lack of trust in political leaders. This is especially true in the case of youth voters who chose to turn their backs on the utopian rhetoric of political figureheads, who tend towards deflection, falsehoods and exaggerations every elections cycle in order to garner votes from the general public.

Those citizens who boycotted polling centers in Saturday's elections were within their rights to use their voice in protest, and to express mistrust towards leaders that had failed to provide alternatives in a highly congested and deeply flawed multi-party political system. While major political parties in the Maldives had focused most of their campaign in outlying atolls, the downsides to this strategy were glaring as the results of the vote came in.

On Saturday, main-ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) faced a resounding defeat in the election for Mayor of Male' City, the Maldives' capital, for the first time in a decade— the first such loss for the party's stronghold since the inception of decentralized governance in the country. Voter turnout had been at record-lows across wards in the capital, and the results sought by the few thousands who had chosen to vote had been crippling for the ruling government. It was apparent early on that MDP would be losing the seat of Male' City Mayor for the first time, and that too in the most disadvantageous way possible. The Mayor-elect for Male' City, representing the opposition at Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), is none other than Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, who held the office of Minister of Housing for seven years and is an unfortunately close partner to jailed ex-president Yaameen Abdul Gayyoom. Dr. Muizzu won the election against MDP candidate and former Secretary General of the party, Anas Abdul Sattar, unable to secure the seat despite the full weight of the MDP leadership and resources backing his campaign.

The loss is very shameful for MDP, as to this day, many regard Dr. Muizzu as a political failure with a track record for corruption and inefficiency. During his time in office, Dr. Muizzu's name had become synonymous with the not working of things, but due to significantly low voter turnout in the capital, a few thousand votes in his favor have secured Dr. Muizzu the coveted seat of Mayor of Male' City.

While MDP has secured mayoral seats in the remaining three cities and continues to make gains from the vote across islands, the loss of Male', which has been staunchly MDP for the longest time, is a huge blow to the party and their vision for decentralization in the next two years. On Monday, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih acknowledged at a presser that the loss of Male' were the result of difficulties faced by citizens, and highlighted the housing crisis as one such issue of critical importance to his administration. The President also highlighted that delays in investigating the MMPRC grand corruption case, and failure to facilitate justice in the deaths of Minivan News Journalist Ahmed Rilwan and democratic activist Yameen Rasheed, had also been key reasons for voters in Male' shunning MDP.

In addition to this, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has celebrated MDP's victory in the elections across islands, along with perfunctory acknowledgements from most of the MDP leadership on social media. Despite this, reports suggest that they remain conflicted over the major flop of their campaign in Male' City. As MDP faces its most embarrassing defeat yet, party leader and former president Speaker Nasheed has said that one must not depend on the belief that a political party or belief will "always" receive full support, commitment and backing. However, Speaker Mohamed Nasheed claims that he does not believe the outcomes of Saturday's polls do not mean that his "political fame" is on a downward spiral.

Whichever way the winds of decentralization will blow next, Dr. Mohamed Muizzu is already proving to be a major wrench in the works for main-ruling MDP. His first order of action as the apparent Mayor-elect of Male' City had been to call on the government to transfer ex-president Yaameen to house arrest. While this will definitely be a point of no-compromise for many citizens wronged under Yaameen's authoritarian government, it is likely that Dr. Muizzu will be working his hardest to disrupt the incumbent administration's stance on the matter during his tenure as Male' City Mayor.

How big of a wrench Dr. Muizzu will throw into the Solih administration's carefully designed machine of empowered local governance remains to be seen. The heart of this endeavor lies in political reform that veers away from the conveniences of centralization and the central government. However, the MDP leadership seems to have estranged themselves from their foundational youth voters and core values, instead getting even more tangled up with those further on the right on the political spectrum with the election of opposition candidates to key seats in the Male' area and across atolls.