VICTORIA, Seychelles: The people of Seychelles voted Saturday in an election to choose a new leader and parliament, with President Wavel Ramkalawan seeking a second term in Africa’s smallest country.
Ramkalawan’s chief political rival, Patrick Herminie of the United Seychelles Party, is a veteran lawmaker and parliamentary speaker from 2007 to 2016.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. in a sign of what was expected to be a strong voter turnout in the tourist haven, where the president is elected for a five-year term.
Long lines formed at many polling stations across the country Saturday. Electoral authorities said all stations opened on time and voting was proceeding smoothly.
Ramkalawan, an Anglican priest who later became involved in politics, became the first opposition leader since 1976 to defeat the ruling party when he made his sixth bid for the presidency in 2020.
The ruling Linyon Demokratik Seselwa party campaigned on economic recovery, social development and environmental sustainability.
If no contender receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the two top candidates go into a runoff. Just over 77,000 people are registered to vote in Seychelles.
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.
The economy also has fueled a growing middle class and opposition to the ruling party.
With its territory spread across about 390,000 square kilometers (150,579 square miles), Seychelles is especially vulnerable to climate change including rising sea levels, according to the World Bank and the UN Sustainable Development Group.
Another concern for voters is a growing drug crisis. A 2017 United Nations report described the country as a major drug transit route. The 2023 Global Organized Crime Index said the island nation has one of the world’s highest rates of heroin addiction.
An estimated 6,000 people out of Seychelles’ population of 120,000 use the drug, while independent analysts say addiction rates approach 10 percent. Most of the country’s population lives on the island of Mahé, home to the capital Victoria.
Critics say Ramkalawan has largely failed to rein in the drug crisis. His rival, Herminie, also was criticized for failing to stem the addiction rates while serving as chairman of the national Agency for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation from 2017 until 2020.
Seychelles president seeks a second term as people vote in African tourist haven
https://arab.news/gskv2
Seychelles president seeks a second term as people vote in African tourist haven
- Ramkalawan’s chief political rival, Patrick Herminie of the United Seychelles Party, is a veteran lawmaker and parliamentary speaker from 2007 to 2016
Ukraine, China mineral dominance on agenda as G7 meets
- There will also be discussions on Sudan, gripped by a war since April 2023
- China’s dominance of critical mineral supply chains is a growing area of concern for the G7
NIAGRA-ON-THE-LAKE: G7 foreign ministers were gathering in Canada on Tuesday for talks expected to focus on Ukraine, as the club of industrialized democracies seeks a path toward ending the four-year-old conflict.
Options to fund Kyiv’s war needs against invasion by Russia could feature prominently at the talks in Canada’s Niagara region on the US border.
The diplomats are meeting after US President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies in October, slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the conflict.
Trump has also pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine.
Ukraine is enduring devastating Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, but Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand stopped short of promising concrete outcomes to aid Kyiv at the Niagara talks.
She told AFP a priority for the meeting was broadening discussion beyond the Group of Seven, which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
“For Canada, it is important to foster a multilateral conversation, especially now, in such a volatile and complicated environment,” Anand said.
Representatives from Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea will also be at the meeting held a short drive from the iconic Niagara Falls.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will hold bilateral talks with Anand on Wednesday, the second and final day of the G7 meeting.
Anand said she did not expect to press the issue of Trump’s trade war, which has forced Canadian job losses and squeezed economic growth.
“We will have a meeting and have many topics to discuss concerning global affairs,” Anand told AFP.
“The trade issue is being dealt with by other ministers.”
Trump abruptly ended trade talks with Canada last month — just after an apparently cordial White House meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The president has voiced fury over an ad, produced by Ontario’s provincial government, which quoted former US president Ronald Reagan on the harm caused by tariffs.
- Sudan, Critical minerals -
Italy’s foreign ministry said there will also be discussions on Sudan, gripped by a war since April 2023 that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Delivering aid to the war-ravaged African country will be a focus of the talks, which come hours after UN humanitarian coordinator Tom Fletcher met with Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on getting life-saving supplies to civilians.
The G7’s top diplomats are meeting two weeks after the grouping’s energy secretaries agreed on steps to counter China’s dominance of critical mineral supply chains, a growing area of concern for the world’s industrialized democracies.
Beijing has established commanding market control over the refining and processing of various minerals — especially the rare earth materials needed for the magnets that power sophisticated technologies.
The G7 announced an initial series of joint projects last month to ramp up refining capacity that excludes China.
While the United States was not party to any of those initial deals, the Trump administration has signaled alignment with its G7 partners.
A State Department official told reporters ahead of the Niagara meet that critical mineral supply chains would be “a major point of focus.”
“There’s a growing global consensus among a lot of our partners and allies that economic security is national security,” the official said.
