France-Albert Rene

Who is France-Albert Rene?

France-Albert Rene was a Seychellois lawyer, revolutionary and politician who served as the second President of Seychelles from 1977 to 2004. He was born on 16 November 1935 on the remote island of Farquhar, the son of a plantation manager and a seamstress, and was educated at St Joseph's Convent and St Louis College before winning a scholarship to study theology at a Capuchin seminary in Switzerland. He later shifted to law, qualifying in London at King's College and joining the Middle Temple in 1957. Returning to Seychelles, he practised law and entered politics, co-founding the socialist Seychelles People's United Party, and served as Prime Minister after independence in 1976 under President James Mancham. In June 1977, while Mancham was abroad, Rene led an armed coup, backed by Tanzanian-trained fighters, and installed himself as President, ruling through a one-party socialist state for the next sixteen years. Facing international and domestic pressure, he oversaw the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1993 and continued to be re-elected under the new constitution until he voluntarily stepped down in 2004, handing power to his Vice-President James Michel. He died on 27 February 2019 and is remembered, for both his authoritarian early rule and his later reforms, as a dominant figure of modern Seychellois history.

Sources: France-Albert Rene, Wikipedia · Encyclopaedia Britannica, "France-Albert Rene" · Kevin Shillington, Albert Rene, the Father of Modern Seychelles: A Biography (reviewed in Project MUSE)