Seychelles votes in tight runoff election

VICTORIA, Seychelles (AP) — The people of Seychelles voted Saturday in a runoff between President Wavel Ramkalawan and opposition challenger Patrick Herminie, whose party seeks a return to power after previously ruling the country for four decades.

There was no outright winner in elections held two weeks ago, with Herminie receiving 48.8% of the vote and Ramkalawan getting 46.4%, according to official results. A candidate needs to win more than 50% of the vote to be declared victorious.

Early voting started on Thursday, but most Seychellois are voting on Saturday. Polling stations opened shortly after 7 a.m. local time and results are expected on Sunday.

The contest between Herminie and Ramkalawan is widely seen as a tight race. Both candidates have run spirited campaigns as they try 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 go. It was the governing party from 1977 to 2020.

Ramkalawan, of the governing Linyon Demokratik Seselwa party, is seeking a second term.

The 115-island archipelago in the Indian Ocean 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 Island, the country’s largest, to a Qatari company to develop a luxury hotel.

The lease, which includes reconstruction of an airstrip to facilitate access for international flights, has ignited widespread criticism that it favors foreign interests over Seychelles’ welfare and sovereignty.

An island nation, Seychelles is especially vulnerable to climate change, including rising sea levels, according to the World Bank and the U.N. Sustainable Development Group.

It also faces an addiction crisis fuelled by heroin. A 2017 U.N. 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.

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