The president-elect of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, has marked his victory with a pledge to end the foreign military presence in his small but strategically placed atoll nation.

Muizzu, 45, addressing his first public rally after winning Saturday’s runoff election stopped short of naming India, the only foreign power with a military deployment in the archipelago.

“We will be sending back military forces based in the Maldives according to law, and for sure we will do that accordingly,” Muizzu said at the rally in the capital Male on Monday night.

The people who brought… military forces don’t want to send them back, but the people of the Maldives decided,” he said.

Outgoing President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had realigned the nation’s relations with traditional benefactor India, after his predecessor Abdulla Yameen moved the Maldives into Beijing’s orbit, borrowing heavily from China for infrastructure projects.

Muizzu is a proxy of Yameen who was barred from last month’s election because of his criminal conviction for corruption.