SEYCHELLES
By Denis Rose, Chief Editor, Seychelles Nation
24 February 2003

With a population of 80,000 scattered over 115 islands, the Republic of Seychelles has only one daily newspaper, the Seychelles Nation, published by Nation Publishing, Information Division, Ministry of Information, Technology and Communication. The country's other papers come out weekly and are political party newspapers, namely The People of the ruling Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF), Regar of the mainstream Opposition party Seychelles National Party (SNP) and Le Nouveau Weekly of the Democratic Party (DP).

Other than that, with 90% of the population of Seychelles being Roman Catholics, the Roman Catholic Church publishes a monthly newspaper-cum-magazine, L'Echo des Iles. All these papers have a print run of below 5,000 copies.

Apart from the fact that it is the country's only daily newspaper, Seychelles Nation is also the best selling and most popular publication because of its mission of uniting the Seychellois population by reporting in such a way as not to instigate political violence, disorder and hatred.

As for The People, Regar and Le Nouveau Weekly, because they are political party newspapers, they all write in favour of their parties and bash each other. L'Echo des Iles in general write about church matters but it from time to time gets involved in politics and whenever it does so, it is generally to criticise the government. In Seychelles the press is free but as is the case anywhere else in the world, the newspaper has to take responsibility for what it writes and if this is libellous or defamatory, it is taken to task by the aggrieved parties and this sometime results in lawsuits.

With Seychelles being one of the world's youngest democracies as the country returned to multi-party politics in 1992 after being a one-party state for 15 years (1977-1992), this press freedom is, in many instances, confused with irresponsible journalism.

In the name of freedom of the press journalists, mainly from the partisan political newspapers, believe they can write whatever they want without getting their facts right, accuse people of whatever comes to mind, and get away with it. When the aggrieved parties exercise their right as human beings and seek redress before the courts, these newspapers claim that there is no press freedom.

Seychelles Nation was born at Independence in 1976 and is an offspring of Seychelles Bulletin published by the British during the colonial era. As was the case with its predecessor, Seychelles Nation is financed by the government, but it has to recover the money given to it in the budget through sale of advertisements and other services. The paper is run by an editorial board under the chairmanship of the Chief Editor. The government is not involved in the day-to-day running of the paper. From Monday to Friday the paper is published in black and white and has 12 pages. A 20-page issue, four of them in colour, is published on Saturdays. The paper does not appear on Sundays and public holidays. Seychelles Nation is a trilingual publication with articles in all three national languages - English, French and Creole - appearing in one issue. The choice of language depends on the importance of the article and the targeted audience.