Seychelles president wins tight election victory
Seychelles President James Michel won a narrow victory in a hard-fought race for the islands' top job, beating off a strong opposition challenge amid fears of unrest.
After a campaign dominated by economics issues and opposition calls for an end to Michel's party's 29-year grip on power, the incumbent took 53.7 percent of the vote to win a five-year term as leader of the Indian Ocean archipelago.
Michel bested activist priest Wavel Ramkalawan, who took 45.7 percent in his best showing yet in four runs for the presidency, and easily outdistanced independent candidate Phillipe Boulle who garnered just 0.56 percent.
"It's a great moment for me and a great moment for the people of the Seychelles," Michel said at a televised ceremony early Monday where the official results were announced from the three-day exercise.
"I will be the president of every Seychellois ... without discrimination," he said, calling for unity after a tough campaign that had raised fears of political unrest on the 115-island chain of some 85,000 people.
Ramkalawan, an Anglican cleric, accepted defeat and said he would not challenge the results, but accused Michel's ruling Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) of electoral misconduct, including vote-buying.
"It's a disappointment," he said, urging Michel to follow through on his promises to govern fairly in surprisingly blunt remarks, also carried live on national television. "This election was not held on a level playing field."
"I just hope that he is sincere when he says he wants to work for every Seychellois," Ramkalawan said. "Unfortunately, we have heard these nice sounding words before but they have not amounted to much."
Initial reports from international observers indicated the polls, which opened on outlying islands on Friday and Saturday before moving to the three main ones on Sunday, had been largely free and fair.
Ramkalawan's Seychelles National Party (SNP) had held high hopes for the election believing they had tapped into growing disenchantment with the government, which critics say is riddled with corruption and cronyism.
Despite spirited calls for radical change and a controversial proposal to devalue the national currency to deal with a severe foreign reserve shortage, voters handed Michel a slim victory of less than 4,500 ballots.
Michel took 30,119 votes to Ramkalawan's 25,626 and Boulle's 314, with turnout among the islands' 64,026 eligible voters at 88 percent, according to Electoral Commissioner Hendrick Gappy.
Michel -- who inherited the presidency from his political mentor, long-time Seychelles leader France Albert-Rene, when he stepped down two years ago -- was in his maiden quest to be elected, and is to be sworn in on Tuesday.
His victory keeps intact the SPPF's three-decade rule of the far-flung islands, which began in 1977 when the authoritarian Rene toppled the nation's first independence president, James Mancham, in a coup.
Mancham, who returned to the Seychelles in 1993 after Rene restored multi-party democracy and is now an opposition figure, fled the islands on Sunday, saying he feared post-election violence and a possible new coup.
"I am not particularly satisfied that if the opposition parties win the election, that this will be respected and that the country will go through a peaceful transition," he told reporters before heading to London.
Mancham's departure fuelled concerns of instability which had grown in recent days despite the relatively peaceful campaign on worries Michel would not accept defeat if it lost.
The election had energized the sleepy 115-island chain, known for its white sandy beaches, translucent green waters and luxury resorts but also saddled with one of the world's highest per capita debt burdens.
Michel has vowed to continue Rene's mix of socialist welfare-state policies with gradual economic liberalization for the mainly Creole inhabitants of the former French and British colony.
He had been a fervent opponent of Ramkalawan plans to revamp the tuna- and tourism-dependent economy by devaluing the Seychelles rupee, which trades on the black market more than twice the official rate of 5.5 to the dollar.
AFP
