National Assembly   |29 July 2023

Five speakers in 30 years

Tomorrow, July 30, will mark 30 years since the first sitting of the National Assembly of the Third Republic.

This was by a proclamation gazetted by the then President of the Republic, France Albert Rene.

All National Assembly sittings are presided by a Speaker. So far, the National Assembly of the Third Republic has known five Speakers – Francis MacGregor (1993-2007), Dr Patrick Herminie (2007 to 2015), Patrick Pillay (2016-2018), Nicholas Prea (2018-2020) and Roger Mancienne (2020 till now).

The Constitution of the Third Republic established a new legislature renaming the former People’s Assembly as the National Assembly, comprising directly elected members per district and proportionally elected members as per political party percentage obtained overall nationally.

The 1993 elections returned 33 members, of which 22 were directly elected per district and 11 through the proportional system. The composition of the House then comprised three political parties – the Seychelles People’s Progressive Front (SPPF) with 27 members, Democratic Party (DP) with five and the United Opposition (UO) with one. The UO was by this time a merger of three opposition parties, namely Parti Seselwa, The National Alliance Party and the Seychelles National Movement.

The 11 seats for the proportionately elected members also saw for the first time in Seychelles the establishment of a proportionately electoral system that recognised in another form the extent of public opinion that cannot always be fairly represented by the ‘first past the post’ electoral system.

Roles of a Speaker

The Speaker is elected at the start of the first sitting of the first meeting of a new Assembly, and he/she must be a member of the National Assembly as provided for in the Constitution.

By presiding over the sittings of the House, the Speaker enforces the rules prescribed in the standing orders of the National Assembly for the orderly conduct of the business of the House.

When carrying out the duties in the House, the Speaker must remain impartial and fair to all members of the National Assembly. He/she regulates and enforces the rules of debate, decides who has the right to speak and rules on a point of Order.

He/she also acts as the representative of the House in its relations with other parliaments and outside bodies. The Speaker also welcomes visiting dignitaries and represents parliament at national events and during official visits abroad. He/she is overall in charge of the administration of parliament and its secretariat.

The five Speakers

Francis MacGregor

Born in 1950, Francis MacGregor was the first Speaker of the Third Republic after the 1993 multiparty elections and served three five-year mandates from 1993 to 2007, thus heading the first, second and third National Assembly.

He became a member of the National Assembly through the proportional system for the then Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) now United Seychelles (US).

Earlier, he was elected as the chairman of the People's Assembly after the 1987 elections.

Mr MacGregor, who has written a book about the legislative history in Seychelles, was a lawyer by profession. He also served as a judge in the judiciary of Seychelles and was the president of the Seychelles Court of Appeal from 2007 to 2019.

Dr Patrick Herminie

Succeeding Mr MacGregor as Speaker in 2007, Dr Patrick Herminie served two five-year terms as Speaker – from 2007 to 2016 – leading the fourth and fifth National Assembly.

A medical doctor by profession, Dr Herminie was born on September 22, 1963. He spent 25 years in the National Assembly, including five years as a directly elected member, 10 years as leader of the government business and a decade as speaker.

First elected to the Assembly in 1993, Dr Herminie served as leader of government business from 1998 to 2003. He was elected as Speaker on May 29, 2007.

Still involved in politics, Dr Herminie was elected leader of the United Seychelles political party in 2021.

Patrick Pillay

Patrick Pillay was sworn in as Speaker of the sixth National Assembly of Seychelles on September 27, 2016. This was in fact the nation's first legislative body not controlled by the president's party as Linyon Demokratik Seselwa (LDS), a coalition, had won the parliamentary election.

The majority of seats – 19 out of the 33 – were won by the opposition party Linyon Demokratik Seselwa, putting the country in a position of cohabitation.

After serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Health, as well as being the resident high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Mr Pillay left government to form his own political party Lalyans Seselwa. With Ahmed Afif as vice-president candidate, Mr Pillay contested the presidential election for the first time in 2015 and he came out third in the first round with a score of 14.19 percent ‒ a record for a first-timer.

In the September 2016 parliamentary election he stood as a candidate of the opposition Linyon Demokratik Seselwa (LDS) coalition in Anse Boileau and won a seat in the National Assembly. He was elected as Speaker of the National Assembly on September 27, 2016.

Mr Pillay resigned on January 29, 2018 from both the position of Speaker and member of the National Assembly and Philip Arrisol won the seat in the resulting by-election.

Nicholas Prea

The fourth Speaker of the National Assembly was Nicholas Prea and he was sworn in on March 6, 2018 and his elevation to the Assembly's top post came after the resignation of Patrick Pillay in January.

He resigned and stepped down on October 29, 2020.

When he became Speaker, he was the elected member for the district of Bel Ombre.

Prea, 58, is an engineer by profession and he was a member of the Seychelles National Party and served as its secretary general.

Roger Mancienne

Formerly chief editor of the Regar newspaper, Roger Mancienne is the fifth Speaker of the National Assembly and leads the seventh cohort after swearing in on October 28, 2020 following his party, Linyon Demokratik Seselwa’s victory in the parliamentary election, taking 20 out of 26 constituencies

A former English language teacher, the 66-year-old was part of the underground opposition to the one-party regime and joined with others to maintain an internal opposition in defiance of the regime. In 1991, with the change to multi-party politics in Seychelles, Roger Mancienne was a founder member of Parti Seselwa, the first opposition party to be registered under the new system.

In 2015, Mr Mancienne was the vice-presidential nominee for the Seychelles National Party (SNP) alongside Wavel Ramkalawan as presidential candidate. The party narrowly lost this election but went on to further consolidate the opposition with the formation of Linyon Demokratik Seselwa which named him as party leader, and won a majority in the National Assembly elections of 2016.

Compiled by Gerard Govinden