Election of the Weekend II: Seychelles
By 
Our second election this weekend takes us to the Seychelles, where a president and a 36 member national assembly will be elected. The presidency requires a second round if no candidate gets an outright majority of the votes this weekend. The National Assembly is composed of 26 single member districts, and 10 PR seats. In what strikes me as a dubious choice in electoral design, there is no separate PR election; the votes for candidates will be tallied by party nationally, and each party will receive an additional member for each 10% of the total vote they get. (Why Dubious? Because I don’t voters should have to choose deciding between the leading candidates and giving support to a smaller party with no hope of winning the seat, but some hope of winning seats through national percentage. Tragically, I was not consulted.)
The current president, Wavel Ramkalawan, is seeking re-election. A former Anglican priest and long-serving National Assembly member, he had come in second in three previous elections prior to winning in 2020. (In 2015, he lost by .3%, which in this small country amounts to 196 votes; his earlier losses were much more substantial.) He is the first president from a party other than the Seychelles Progressive People’s Front, later rebranded as the People’s Party, and now running under the name United Seychelles, which won every presidential election from 1979-2011. Ramkalawan heads the LDS (Linyon Demokratik Seselwa), which currently holds 25 of the 35 occupied seats in the National Assembly. United Seychelles is running Patrick Herminie, a medical doctor and former Speaker of the National Assembly (2007-2016). He was apparently arrested on a number of witchcraft-related charges in 2023, including “possession of items intended for use in witchcraft,” “procuring services related to witchcraft,” and “conspiracy to perform witchcraft, which be believed to be politically motivated. (In a BBC article that, frankly, raises more questions than it answers, we learn that police claimed the charges stem from evidence discovered in the exhumation of two bodies from a Mahe cemetery.) The charges were dropped in early 2024, clearing the way for his presidential run.
The Seychelles have typically been a two party-dominant political system, and this election isn’t likely to be an exception. United Seychelles, under its various names, have been the dominant party, holding the presidency from 1979-2020. They have identified as a party of the left for the duration, although at least rhetorically they’ve been moving to the center in recent years. Ramkalawan’s LDS is a broad coalition with a range of parties, but tends toward a liberal/centrist/developmental orientation.
The election has been dominated by cost of living issues. The Seychelles has one of Africa’s highest GDP per capita, but high cost of living cuts into the relatively high wages a great deal. Most islands in the archipelago have rocky, mountainous or otherwise in hospitable interiors, making them unsuitable for both agriculture and habitation. The economy is dominated by (mostly high-end) tourism, which puts pressure on existing housing stock. The lack of arable land means at least 90% of the food must be imported, keeping food prices high. As in many tourism dominated locations like this, the politics of tourism are tricky. The ways in which high levels of tourism contributes to a higher cost of living are difficult to ignore, but without tourism the economy would collapse. A lawsuit has been filed against the current government by allies of the opposition regarding a sweetheart lease given to a Qatari firm planning a luxury hotel development.
Another issue that has been prominent in this election is the problem of heroin addiction, which is apparently quite bad, and has been for some time. I don’t know how much stock to put in the claim that 10% of the country are heroin addicts, but it shows up a lot. Ramkalawan used the failure to address this crisis to his advantage against the incumbent in 2020, and five years later, with the underlying situation largely unchanged, it’s now a liability for him.
Polls actually closed several hours ago; as far as I can tell no results announced yet. Results should be known by later tonight or tomorrow.