James Alix Michel

James Alix Michel (born August 16, 1944 ) is a Seychellois politician. From 2004 to 2016 he was President of the island republic.

Life

Michel was initially a teacher, then worked in the booming tourism of the archipelago and in 1964 became a member of the recently founded party of France-Albert René , later renamed the Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) left-wing Seychelles People's United Party.

He was a member of the Party Central Committee, René against the first President of the country, in 1977 James Mancham , staged a coup and declared himself the new head of state. During the following socialist one-party government, which lasted until 1993, Michel held various key positions in the party and the ministries. During René's 27-year tenure, he was economic manager for the Seychelles several times, during which time the Seychelles initially experienced an economic boom in the areas of tourism and fishing ; however, there was stagnation in the 1990s.

Michel played an important role in the country's democratization process. In 1993 a new constitution was passed and the one-party system was abolished; in the presidential elections in July, multiple parties were allowed to run for the first time since 1979.

After Michel became Vice President under René in 1996, he succeeded him as Head of State after his resignation on July 14, 2004. During his reign, the country's economic situation deteriorated, which led to growing opposition . This warned of economic decline (the Seychelles had to declare state bankruptcy in 2008) as well as the wrong development of society and called for further democratization of the country, including with regard to the restricted freedom of the press.

Michel ran for re-election in the presidential election in December 2015 , but missed an absolute majority in the first ballot. He won the subsequent runoff election against opposition leader Wavel Ramkalawan with just under 50.15 percent of the valid votes.

On September 27, 2016, after the new parliament had been sworn in the morning, in which the opposition had the majority for the first time, President James Michel resigned with effect from October 16. He was succeeded as president by his party friend Danny Faure , who had previously been vice president.