Ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has finally conceded defeat in Saturday's local council elections to main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).
Amid the initial confusion over contrasting provisional results, both parties had claimed victory in the elections.
The confusion seems to stem from the contrasting preliminary results reported by state broadcaster Public Service Media (PSM) and opposition aligned Raajje TV.
But as the elections commission began announcing provisional results on Tuesday, the outcome of the least popular elections in the Maldives showed an overwhelming majority for MDP backed by the now united opposition parties.
Chief government lawmaker Ahmed Nihan Hussain Manik, in a series of Tweets conceded defeat to the opposition but vowed to rectify mistakes for the presidential elections next year.
With just a handful ballot boxes to be counted, the provision results show that MDP had secured a total 294 seats to PPM's 208. The remaining seats were dominated by independent candidates, followed by government coalition partner Maldives Development Alliance (MDA) and opposition Jumhoory Party (JP).
The defeat would be a major blow for the government and a welcome one for the opposition as both sides urging the people to come out in numbers to declare their support through the vote.
A total of 1,487 candidates had contested the elections for 664 seats including 563 councilors to 179 island councils, 67 councilors to 18 atoll councils and 23 councilors to three city councils.
Though 255,987 Maldivians were eligible to vote, voter turnout was reportedly much lower than expected despite the elections commission extending voting by two hours.
Originally slated for January 14 the council elections had been delayed thrice, first ordered by the civil court over the rift in the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and twice by the elections commission.
After rescheduling the polls for April 8 after the court ruling, the commission postponed the polls again to April 15, claiming that public schools were unavailable to accommodate polling stations at an earlier date before delaying it for the third time to May 6 after the swine flu outbreak.
Compared to the more illustrious parliamentary and presidential elections, the council elections in the past have been considered less significant to the political parties in the Maldives since the decentralized system was introduced in 2009.
