Q&A with HE James Michel, President of the Seychelles

Interviewed by Francis Ventura

HE James Michel has been President of the Seychelles since 2004, having previously served as Vice President from 1996 to 2004. Mr Michel was in Australia for the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Perth from 28-30 October 2011. Mr Michel speaks about the Diamond Jubilee Fund, the role of the Commonwealth in addressing development issues, and the challenges faced by small developing countries in balancing development and sustainability, in an international order designed by and for much larger nations.

Earlier at CHOGM, (British PM) David Cameron announced the establishment of a Diamond Jubilee Trust Fund which will be established to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This trust fund will issue grants for people in need around the Commonwealth. Given that anywhere between twenty and thirty thousand people die every year, or children especially die from preventable diseases, and given the number of nations in the Commonwealth, some close to you, Mozambique, Maldives etc rank among the lowest on the United Nations Human Development Index, do you see or will you push for, a trust to alleviate poverty within the Commonwealth?

President Michel: I think this initiative is a very commendable one, as we celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty. This will provide the opportunity to really have something that is worthwhile, that will benefit the children of some of the poorest countries. I think we’ll go a long way to give these unfortunate children a better life. As these countries prepare and work towards building the capacity themselves, to be able to ensure that they have the capacity to look after their children and ensure that they eliminate poverty, they eliminate disease as much as possible and ensure that every child has the right to live and become productive as they grow up. So, I would personally welcome any initiative to ensure that children are first of all saved, and then have the possibility to grow and become productive because I believe in the youth, because I believe in the future and the future is the youth . In my country, in Seychelles, I do everything I can to put in place, as much as possible, programs that empower the youth, empower the young generation to ensure that as leaders of tomorrow, they will continue to sustain the growth of the country and continue to build not only the wealth but also the capacity in everywhere, social, culture, security and ensure that our country will continue to grow as prosper.

I remember you spoke in Melbourne about the incompatibility between consumerism and environmental sustainability. You lead an economy which is a market-driven, capitalist economy. However at the same time you’re also passionate about environmental sustainability. How do you reconcile these goals, and what measures have you taken, to promote the compatibility between the two, because that’s the reality for most countries?

I think compatibility is possible, it is a reality. We have proved it in Seychelles. We have established a market economy. We are empowering our young people to become a nation of entrepreneurs. To build, to depend on themselves in order to build their future, to create wealth for the country. At the same time, we have educated them, from a very early age our children are educated to appreciate the values of the environment, to appreciate what nature has given them and also to appreciate the fact that nature doesn’t belong to us but we belong to nature. Therefore, we have to preserve nature if we are to be able to benefit from what nature has given us and this is why we have developed this policy of integrating the protection and the management of the environment with development. As far as our tourism industry is concerned, we ensure that hotels are built in such a way that the hotels are integrated in the environment and that the developers participate and contribute to the protection and the management of the environment. This is working very well. In the other sectors like fishing for example, we ensure that we have sustainable fishing activity. On the continental plateau we ensure that it is reserved only for our fisherman, and then we monitor the sustainability of the species that exist, and there are certain species where we put a ban during certain periods of the year or a number of years to ensure that they reproduce until they can be allowed to be exploited again. Even fishing the pelagic species, we monitor the activities and any other activity that we do that is economic that is necessary for development and the creation of wealth, that there is always sustainability to ensure that the environment is protected. We have very strict environmental laws which ensure that. On some islands we have strict rules that no development takes place above a fifteen metre contour line, to ensure that we protect the pristine environment. So in that way, I think we are unique because we want to preserve our country for future generations and the young people themselves, we are conscious of that, so we can sustain our economic development and our livelihood for the future.

Your Foreign Minister Jean-Paul Adam, stated in 2010 to the United Nations that the  ‘one size fits all’ model of international development has not worked. How can development thus be tailored in order to provide economic, political and social benefits to the people where it’s being implemented?

This is the problem with most of the current international institutions. Most of these large international institutions were created after the Second World War. I think the time has come for rejuvenation and earlier atthe second session of CHOGM, we talked about a Charter for the rejuvenation of the Commonwealth. I think it is important because without rejuvenation, we become irrelevant, and today I think the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations have become irrelevant in a way, or are becoming irrelevant because they do not represent the realities of the new global economic and social environment. The world has changed, but the rules of these institutions have not changed. Therefore, there is a need to relook at the rules of these institutions and ensure that new guidelines, new rules new charters are conceived and worked out to be able to fit the specificities of different countries or different economies, or different cultures because we are living in a globalised world, but we have different countries with different specificities. Let us look for example at the small island states. You cannot put us in the same bag as you put any big country with different kinds of resources or more resources that small countries do not have. So today, even if small countries work hard and strive to be able to make it to the middle-income level, then they are penalised and they are no longer given access to concessionary credit and so on, and what will happen is that they will slip back into becoming poor countries. So this is what I call the ‘middle-income trap’ because once you’re there, once you’ve done well, you are penalised because you’ve done well. This is because again, of the specific criteria created by the Bretton Woods institutions after the Second World War, which has to change. All these institutions have to be rejuvenated in the light of modern-day realities.

Fellow Commonwealth nations have very low positions on the 2010 United Nations Development Index, including South Africa at 113, India at 132, Pakistan at 128 and Sierra Leone at 161 (Australia is second). How can the Commonwealth, as a member-based organisation better ensure greater diplomatic and economic cooperation amongst its members to generate greater prosperity?

The Commonwealth itself, in terms of capacity to do things? There is no mandate to do that. But, the Commonwealth can share ideas, can exchange views and come up with possibilities of what can be done, and then the Commonwealth, as  a bigger voice, share these ideas to the institutions that can make things happen. I see the Commonwealth as an institution in which we have shared values of course.  These values, I think, are the foundation for growth, the foundation for stability and unity, which is very essential for growth and for the creation of wealth of any country.

Francis Ventura is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and International Relations at the University of Melbourne. He attended CHOGM as a Commonwealth Youth Correspondent.