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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.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 12, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine on Saturday killed at least five people, while also cutting power to parts of the southern Odesa region, the AFP news agency reported, citing local officials.
• Two of the victims were killed in an attack on a church in Kostiantynivka in eastern Donetsk, AFP said.
• Ukraine’s private energy firm DTEK said that power has been restored to 240,000 households in Odesa after a Russian attack overnight on Saturday, which damaged some energy infrastructure.
• The Russian TASS news agency said a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region killed an 81-year-old man.
• An official from Ukraine’s SBU security service told the Reuters news agency that Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Bashneft oil refinery in Ufa, causing explosions and a fire. The unnamed official said the attack marked the third time Ukrainian forces struck the facility in Bashkortostan in southwestern Russia in the last month.

Regional security

Politics and diplomacy

• In a separate post on Facebook, Zelenskyy said that he congratulated Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East, while urging him to broker a similar deal for Russia’s war on Ukraine. He wrote that if Trump could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well”.

Taliban and Pakistani forces have exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, prompting calls for restraint from Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as tensions escalate following an air strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, earlier this week.

Enayatullah Khwarizmi, the spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, said late on Saturday that Taliban forces had carried out “successful retaliatory” attacks against Pakistani soldiers in response to the neighbouring country’s “repeated violations” of, and air strikes on, Afghan territory.

He said on X that the operation had ended at midnight.

Pakistani Minister of Interior Mohsin Naqvi called the Afghan attacks “unprovoked” and said that Pakistani forces were responding “with a stone for every brick”.

“Firing by Afghan forces on civilian population is a blatant violation of international laws. Pakistan’s brave forces have given a prompt and effective response that no provocation will be tolerated,” he said in a post on X.

Radio Pakistan, citing security sources, said the Afghan attacks took place at some six locations along the border.

It said the attacks prompted a “strong, intense response” from the Pakistan Army, and shared video footage of gun and artillery fire that lit up the night sky.

It did not say whether the clashes had ended.

The fighting comes days after explosions rocked the Afghan capital, Kabul, in an air strike that the Taliban blamed on Pakistan.

Islamabad did not claim responsibility for Thursday’s attacks.

However, it accused the Afghan Taliban administration of harbouring fighters of the Pakistani Taliban who attack Pakistan, with the support of its adversary, India.

New Delhi denies the charge, while the Taliban says it does not allow its territory to be used against other countries.

The escalating tensions have prompted regional concern.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi called on his country’s two neighbours “to exercise restraint”.

“Our position is that both sides must exercise restraint,” Araghchi said during a live interview with state television, according to the AFP news agency, adding that “stability” between the countries “contributes to regional stability”.

Qatar expressed “deep concern” over the tensions and the “potential tensions these may have on the security and stability of the region”.

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also urged “both sides to prioritise dialogue and diplomacy, exercise restraint, and work to contain the disputes in a way that helps reduce tension, avoids escalation, and contributes to regional peace and stability”.

Saudi Arabia, too, expressed concern.

“The kingdom calls for restraint, avoiding escalation, and embracing dialogue and wisdom to contribute to reducing tensions and maintaining security and stability in the region,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are streaming back to their land in northern Gaza – a right of return included in the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Multiple attempts to remove the population have failed.

Many Palestinians say they have avoided another Nakba, or catastrophe – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and defeated Israel’s forced displacement policy.

But the land they are returning to is unrecognisable.

Is Gaza uninhabitable? Or can it be rebuilt under the interim authority that next governs the strip?

And does the ceasefire allow for this complex and lengthy task?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Ines Abdel Razek – co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy

Ilan Pappe – chairman of the Nakba Memorial Foundation