Seychelles’s opposition leader, Patrick Herminie, has won the country’s presidential race, defeating incumbent leader Wavel Ramkalawan in a run-off vote, according to the electoral commission.
Herminie won 52.7 percent of the vote, while Ramkalawan took 47.3 percent, official results announced early on Sunday showed.
In his victory speech, Herminie pledged to lower the cost of living, revive public services and unite the island nation.
“The people have spoken,” the 62-year-old said at the headquarters of the electoral commission.
“I am deeply humbled for the trust that the people have placed in me. I will be the president of all Seychellois, and I will end divisions by ceasing preferences, and giving everyone the opportunity to thrive,” he said.
Herminie’s victory gives his United Seychelles party full control of the government after it also reclaimed a majority in parliament during the first round of the general election last month.
The win is also a complete turnaround for Herminie, who in 2023 was arrested on charges of witchcraft that were later dropped. He previously served as speaker of the country’s parliament from 2007 to 2016.
Ramkalawan, who attended the electoral commission’s announcement of the results, congratulated Herminie, who becomes Seychelles’s sixth president.
“I leave with a legacy that makes many presidents blush… I hope President Herminie continues to maintain such a level,” he said.
Images published by the Seychelles Nation newspaper showed the two leaders shaking hands after the announcement.
Outside the electoral commission headquarters, thousands of Herminie’s supporters erupted in cheers and waved the country’s flag and party banners as they greeted him following his proclamation as the winner, according to videos on social media.
The race between the two main contenders was decided in a run-off 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.
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.
Ramkalawan campaigned for re-election on his management of Seychelles’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and expansion of social protections.
But voters opted for Herminie, who accused Ramkalawan of presiding over a proliferation of corruption, and promised to cancel a hotel project permitted by his government that environmentalists say threatens a UNESCO-listed coral atoll.
Herminie has also pledged to lower the retirement age from 65 to 63 and implement recommendations from a truth and reconciliation commission that examined human rights abuses related to a 1977 coup and its aftermath.
A physician by training, he previously headed the government’s anti-drug agency, and has promised to tackle the country’s sky-high heroin addiction, blamed in part on the fact that the islands sit on a drug route between Africa and Asia.
The country’s Agency for Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation says that 5,000 to 6,000 people use heroin out of a population of about 120,000. Other estimates put the figure as high as 10,000.
Seychelles, a nation of 115 islands, is Africa’s wealthiest country per capita.
Located across 1.2 million square kilometres (463,000 sq miles) in the western Indian Ocean, it is a prime tourist destination as well as a target for investment from, and security cooperation with, China, Gulf nations and India.
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