Opposition leader Patrick Herminie won the presidential election in Seychelles, defeating incumbent leader Wavel Ramkalawan in Saturday’s runoff vote, according to official results released early on Sunday.
Herminie garnered 52.7 per cent of the vote, with Ramkalawan taking 47.3 per cent, the results showed. Herminie represents the United Seychelles party, which led the country for four decades before it lost power in 2020.
The race between the two main contenders in Seychelles’ election was decided in a runoff after there was no outright winner in the presidential vote two weeks ago.
Early voting began on Thursday, but most people in the island nation voted on Saturday.
Both Herminie and Ramkalawan ran spirited campaigns trying to address key issues for voters, including environmental damage and a crisis of drug addiction in a country long seen as a tourist haven.
The contest between Herminie and Ramkalawan is widely seen as a tight race. Both candidates have run spirited campaigns trying to address key issues for voters, including environmental damage and a crisis of drug addiction in a country long seen as a tourist haven. Herminie represents the United Seychelles party, which dominated the country’s politics for decades before losing power five years ago. It was the governing party from 1977 to 2020. Ramkalawan, of the governing Linyon Demokratik Seselwa party, is seeking a second term.
The country has become synonymous with luxury and environmental travel, which has bumped Seychelles to the top of the list of Africa’s richest countries by gross domestic product per capita, according to the World Bank.
But opposition to the governing party has been growing. A week before the first round of voting, activists filed a lawsuit against the government challenging a recent decision to issue a long-term lease for a 400,000-square-meter (100-acre) area on Assomption, one of the country’s 115 islands, to a Qatari company to develop a luxury hotel. The largest island in the archipelago is Mahé.
The lease, which includes the reconstruction of an airstrip to facilitate access for international flights, has ignited widespread criticism that it favours foreign interests over Seychelles’ welfare and sovereignty.
Seychelles is especially vulnerable to climate change, including rising sea levels, according to the World Bank and the UN Sustainable Development Group.
It also faces an addiction crisis fueled by heroin. A 2017 UN report described the country as a major drug transit route, and the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index said that the island nation has one of the world’s highest rates of heroin addiction.
