Are on fire right now we just saw a fire engine go by ambulances as well running battles between a very small group of some would call them vandals others would call them extreme protesters or anarchists fighting it out with the police and there were ones who set fire to the churches one of these churches belongs or is used by the police of chile its a symbol of the Chilean Police force so they attack that 1st i can smell and see the smoke billowing behind me and so once again what had been a are largely peaceful joyous if you like demonstration that lasted all day long with tens of thousands of people has been marred by violence. Vote counting is underway in bolivia in a president ial election many hope will restore stability believe us plunge into a political crisis last october when then president evo morales sought a 4th term that led to protests that forced him out of office and in exile votes are being counted in guineas president ial election vying for a controversial 3rd term in office the main opposition candidate john doe accuses him of rigging the votes of violence has broken out an ivory coast just 2 weeks ahead of its president ial election at least 2 people were killed in the city of new the stronghold of a leading opposition candidate. Has called for the vote to be boycotted u. N. Secretary general antonio terrace has a ridge armenia and azerbaijan to respect a new cease fire but both sides accuse each other of violating a 2nd truce hours after it went into effect theyve been fighting over the disputed region of nagorno kind of awe. And new coronavirus measures are in place in a. Contest as he wants to avoid a 4 lockdown at the situation has become critical as will be allowed to kill us public squares in the evening to stop people gathering those are the headlines talks. Now. On counting the cost the price of doing business with china see how to pharmacies turned to the coercion of economic and geopolitical will also beijing for the tibetan farm laborers into reeducation camps and with more bailouts of bellaver east of moscow more of mints counting the cost on aljazeera. Wall or the ability of. The seychelles an island on capella go in the indian ocean at the eastern age of the somali sea for many its paradise on earth the islands were uninhabited throughout most of recorded history and known by arab sailors and other may have a gate and centuries ago the 1st records date back to the early 15 hundreds details when portuguese explorer bass go to gome a cross from india to east africa with these all modern expeditions and settlements by britain and france followed and after years of war the archipelago was surrendered to the british in 18 tain. But selfgovernment was granted in 1995 when britain announced its intention to give a degree of independence to the colony james mansion who had served as chief minister of the crown colony and then as Prime Minister founded the Democratic Party but another movement the Seychelles People united party led by france albert rim a advocated food independence. And that came in 1976 a Coalition Government was cool to mention it became the countrys 1st president and remains the Prime Minister but just a year. Later mansion was overthrown in a coup detat led by rene. With a mention in exile the people of united party became the peoples progressive front and remained the only party in the country until 9091 when once again allowed a multiparty system. They had been other military coup attempts but the party ran a founded still governs the seychelles to this day following 27 years of government james michel came to power in 2004 and the party changed its name to the Peoples Party michel resigned 12 years later power was transferred to his Vice President danny for becoming the former president of seychelles with a president ial election due to take place later in october for aims to keep these party now known as the United Seychelles Party in power but the opposition seems stronger than ever before challenging president ford way of all out of one color one from the linnean democratic sissela coalition and alan said on from the one Seychelles Party but with the political establishment that has been in power since 1977 what does danny 4 have to offer the mobile the 90000 people of the seychelles the president of the republic of seychelles to any fool talks to al jazeera. Danny for president of seashells thank you very much for part involved as you are thank you mr ghanem for having me that where is a population of about 95000 this is a very small nation the koran a pandemic could have been a real disaster what measures your government have taken to prevent such disaster from taking place at the 1st thing that i or the 14th of march this year. Was to really draw a line between my responsibilities and that of the Public Health. Team and we put in place. The necessary. Measures. To ensure that we protect the lives of our citizens and i have not been defeated in the work of the medical team. I also ordered the portfolio of minister for health and i have. Made it my responsibility to give them all the necessary support and as president of the republic i got in touch weekly my peers in the region and within other parts of the world saw or so hours to talk on and find ways of trying to exchange experiences that we have and by doing so we we got International Assistance from from china from india from the African Union from the United States of america from france and from the European Union on together over the last 30 years. Since shell have made that quite a big shift from an agriculture base economy to a tourism based economy where tourism is contributing greatly to the economy in light of the im president of chrono pandemic how bad the economy was impacted and in your estimation is this going to influence the elections in any way now it has to consider shows 50 years for us to go to reach to the level of Economic Development and in particular in the tourism sector. This year would have been one of the best years for my country in economic terms. Last year for the 1st time we had. A surplus off 45000000. 00 mess dollars and during the system so we have done extremely well and the coronavirus just keep us like a tsunami it has badly affected tourism activities and on the 7th of april my government presented a revised budget and in this revised budget we had 2 things. To do it one was to protect jobs and the other priority was to protect lives and as i speak i can see that we have managed to to meet these objectives. Through the National Budget we provided Financial Assistance to. Many. Economy and it is and by doing it by doing so or 16000. Workers continue to receive this on the receipt as a direct support to the workers in my country you dont think that it might have it might influence or impact the elections or the results of the elections but basically what the what what what is happening on the ground is that the general population in my country be sure satisfaction to the decision that i have taken as president these are indecisive. Action on the part of of the president. Because the 1st case of korra virus was reported on the 14th of of much and on the 20th of much i addressed this issue of people whereby i said what we would need to be doing and on the 7th offer of a print we presented every vice but it saw as i speak today the general population they are satisfied in the various schemes and projects in terms of Financial Assistance that we have we have done so i dont see. Any anywhere that the actions we are will be a negative contributor to the results in this forthcoming general elections so we can say that you dont feel im lucky to be in office when this pandemic took place when what i can say the last 6 months has been the 1st 6 months of my presidency and let me be clear here. The seat of the presidency is not only is this it is the most difficult sit but i have always said to my people the people of seashells and i want to send that internationally my concept as a president has always been one of the service of my nation and as i speak today i remain the same person that is there to serve the people of 6 shots dont you think its. After the koran or the koran a pandemic its hard time now for seashell to reconsider. The being heavily dependent on tourism and that it should be looking forward to diaper supine the source of revenue to the economy it took us 50 years to be what we are today and to have the the Infrastructural Development where tourism is concerned and. The sister of people who have invested heavily have borrowed to the financial Banking System and as us president aspire responsibility to ensure that we hope we dont have a financial crisis that will affect the Banking System. So its not a question not thought of that precipitation to have results in the next year or 2 its a question of how do you protect the investments that weve done into reason why its also looking at other areas as we open up i was just about the ask mr president about the blue company its a concept that we we came up with and we have we are now considered as by an ear in this area could you explain to us what do you mean by our new economy. Yes we take the benefits of our essent which is almost 1300000 square kilometers and we say that this is the new untapped opportunity for our country so we look at what we have in the ocean how do we protect the ocean and what sort of resources we have in the ocean so it is an opportunity an opportunity for an International Investors to have to come to 6 shots and to look at you know 50 of structures so that we can tap into the potential of of the ocean this is the concept we heard of a buoy quarter we heard the there are good the prospects for natural gas. And oil offshore oil in the economic excludes of drones of of seashell how far is this from the problem not almost 35 years we created a situation company with the necessary experts and theyve been working so the research continuous. But however we focus our attention on on on Fisheries Development on how we Cultural Development on that developing the i. C. T. And of course the development of. This election the cup and a coming election seems to be a fiercely contested race your challenger mr ron callahan lost last election by a difference of on the 193 votes in case of losing elections are both of you willing to concede defeat causations it is a democracy and i believe in the rule of law and as president i uphold the supreme law of the land which is the constitution and. I am confident that i would win the election but in case the people of seditious decide otherwise ill be the 1st one to do it to tell the people of say shows look here i accept the results this is a democracy and life needs to continue in 2000 is 16 elections the last election opened up the political space. However the truth and Reconciliation Commission established there after. Hasnt done much that could be mentioned here in terms of investigating the the massive violations of human rights during the reign of former president arbitron a was this commissions set up only for for the sake of formality or as a make believe kind of thing. No on the 16th of october when i became president in addressing my the people of 6 shots i said that i stood for National Reconciliation and Unity National unity and i have been speaking about National Unity for the last 4 years so on the 16th program this year i will be serving my country for 4 years and the apps that we have today which creates a National Commission looking at issues of the past was arrived out through discussions and there has been bipartisan agreement but the president of the republic assented to the act so we have all to shirley and nationally endorsed this structure so the commission is independent the president has nothing to do with the commission the president does not interfere in the commission we have done our level best to government to give the commission the necessary resources so that they can do their work independently and this is what the commission is now doing mr president could you explain this paradox that seashell achieve the highest per capita g. D. P. And the whole of africa where as poverty still prevails is it because of what the opposition describes as an. Unchecked corruption is this the other side of the seashell paradox the truth is that it has taken us more than 40 years. To arrive to these International Indicators and as you have rightly pointed out to base it shows is a high income country and the only high income country in africa and this is due to the hard working people of the fence the issue of the issue of causes poverty came out in a report that looked. At salaries at income and it looked at the statistics of the 20 the teen and since i became president we are looking at multidimensionally property looking at indication looking at hell looking at habitat and in the next 2 weeks or 3 i believe that our bureau of statistics will come out we need a new report and this has been one of my Top Priorities and sit shows in addressing the issues of multidimensional property and i can safely say that my administration has done a lot to reduce the number of citizens number of citizens that fall within the poverty bracket in terms of corruption the corruption index at International Level we are number 27 in the world we are number one in africa my stance is being very clear. 0 tolerance to corruption since 1977 the country has introduced a universal social pension free of your cation Free Health Care a lot of a lot of services but that many other countries unfortunately resigned from but on the other hand the countries seen some some of the highest incarceration rates in the world how do you explain such a paradox now we respond country saw when you look at the capita the size of your country and the number of inmates and one of the issues here has been wait with the drug situation and one thing that i changed rapidly when i became president is i decided to treat victims of the drug scotch. As a result of. Addiction and i said this is a Public Health issue and we you know we relaxed some of the existing laws and now we have a special program for the meat i dont. That is it held medication to to help. Young people who suffer from this addiction in light of the opposition accusations of janet gerrymandering the elections even before it took place how do you think this election is going to be midwife it safely. Not i trust the new york electoral Election Commission. There has been accusations in the past we have worked together with the opposition and our parliament we now have a newly appointed Election Commission the Election Commission is independent we have tossed new laws in support of their work i i cannot tell you and i dont think this is correct that there has been any. Tricks on on the part of the party that i belong to and as i say as president i do not interfere in institutions that we have created we allow institutions to carry out their mandate and in this election the Electoral Commission will continue to do its work but as i said its a new commission it has received all the support from all parties consent and i trust the work of the Electoral Commission into southern a 16 the ruling party won the president ial election and lost the majority in the Parliament Suppose the same scenario happened again. Hows it going to play out is there going to be a coup happened between the 2 parties the parliamentary and the president ial or are we going to see a rough wrestling match my platform to the people of seizures is a new platform i am presenting as part of my money festo a government of National Unity. And for the 1st time i had departed from the. From the traditional protocol where the running mate is a card bearer meaning the person belongs to the party in power the person that i have chosen as my running mate. It is not a card bearer of any political party. Mr president considering u. S. Domestic and international Harsh Criticism you country still opens a strange territories as a base for us drone attacks in many cases inflicting casualties among innocent civilians does this represent an insurance policy to the National Security of seashell or do you think of it a risk or an insurance policy for your National Security now the truth is that before i became president of the 6th of october the u. S. Drones here were used as in support for the piracy as you know it in 2008 out in 99 we had a problem and this was the scope of pirates it in the indian ocean so that was the help provided by the United States of america and since the 16th of october there hasnt been any. Support in this regard in terms of the usage of drones by the u. S. Government and as i speak today we have good and friendly relations which of governments around the world been a small nation give do you sometimes feel pressured cold not politically just for the me in fact that its a small country others can see as our small countries but as it shows we have an equal voice we are a member of the United Nations we are member of the African Union we are a member of the Indian Ocean Commission we are a member of of sidekick we have equal voice in the international arena. And we are respected by other countries and our Foreign Policy has been a very clear one besides the geographical proximity be you feel african or beautiful asian considering the implants the sino indian and plants on the island nonsense shows is a member of the African Union. We belong to the african continent but on the 27th of august this year my country celebrated its 250th anniversary since the 1st inhabitants came to seizures so this is how we see ourselves we consider ourselves to be sufficient what the social why our society represents a mosaic of multi ethnic the think that the sign of indian competition over influencing seashell might compromise that one yes. I know we do everything for us from our own situation we are friendly nation we have open our dollars to other nations some came almost 200 years ago and others litter on but the art form part of the society that reality today and our policy has never been to marginalize any groups in our society and this is the our money that we have and i believe its the type of society that other countries must and should emulate well mr president thank you very much for papa dylan. Thank you. Held for over 3 years in an egyptian prison cell denied the right to a fair trial no charges have been brought against al jazeera correspondent must move to saying his crime journalism. To demand news release and voice solidarity with all detained journalists sign the petition. 300 who say. Through the noise figure back up when theres an intricate hour and listened kernel of the facts you know the 5 ways elvis for one of the problems that theyre just really arent a lot of people of color who are making him but off fresh. As right political right to think it is worth the risk of finding a great nerd that can earn their work table by the listening post monitors and in tough words the media on aljazeera might that guys because our priest a singer songwriter dreams of making a mock. All one for. A world away a famous you tube baathist works in secret. Connection spocks some magical collaboration. Presenting princess shore. Witness on aljazeera. Afghanistan is on the cusp of a new chapter in its history. Left in the u. S. In the telephone signed an agreement to pave the way for the withdrawal of international troops. The high cost was paid to get to this point though. Over the past few years the u. S. Has increasingly conducted its part of the war from the sky with more bombs dropped last year than any other year in the past decade. But with that came a rise in civilian casualties. This is war against to happen mistakes do happen and that this is about owning our mistakes this is about things are in this about accountability in the in the laws of the unaccountable war for families we interviewed not receiving adult humans from the u. S. Left without closure. They told us that they saw a liquid happen to their loved ones was a crime. And they want justice mansurs something war too often denied. Drive for complete change in chile large rallies are held across the country but the anger boils over. Time about this and this is all it is there a lot from doha also coming up counting is underway in guinea in a high stakes president ial vote inflamed by ethnic tension and constitutional change. Another cease fire on the edge of collapse the u. N. Chief says as a by john and armenia are ignoring International Calls to stop fighting