It's finally ALL over.

With more than eighty-eight percent of potential voters having taken the time to stand in line and cast their ballots on Sunday, the incumbent was re-elected with a bit more than fifty-three percent of the vote, as verified on Monday, then took the oath of office when inaugurated on Tuesday.

There's no messing around with lag time between election and power-taking, and if the opposition had won, the entire government would have been replaced overnight. Transition time? We don't need no stinkin' transition time.

Seems no one quite trusts anyone to actually do the transitioning that transition time would indicate. The worry ... completely valid, considering the country's history ... is that transition, if allowed the time, would end up being spelled C O U P, therefore resulting in the whole election process being rather a waste of time and effort.

Whether or not this would happen is subject to debate, but that deliberation won't be happening for another five years now.

James Alix Michel has now won an election for the first time.

Confused? Yeah ... I can see how that could happen.

Mr. Michel was Finance Minister when I moved to Seychelles, having been a major player in the coup d'etat that took over on the 5th of June, 1977, and an important part of the government ever since. He was appointed Vice President in 1996, three years into President France Albert Rene's first elected term of office, having held the reins as a single-party communist state since the coup and allowing the first multi-party contest in 1993. A couple of years back, President Rene decided to step down and appointed Mr. Michel President. Two years later, the Constitution required an election, so President Michel campaigned as a candidate for the first time in his long political career.

Now that all this hoopla is behind us, I can get to work. I've already approached the President's office will offers to help, and I'm hoping to get some work with the First Lady. Mrs. Michel is a young mother, and needs a cause. I'm suggesting that the kids in our over-crowded orphanages become that cause.

President Rene's wife and former wife have taken on some important issues relating to children as their torch to bear, but the orphanage kids fall between the gaps in these programs and need someone in a position of influence to carry their standard and rally for their cause.

Adoption laws must be changed, foster care initiated in ernest, shelters for victims of domestic abuse need to be opened, staffed and maintained, and so on. There's a lot of work to be done.

I'm giving them today, Wednesday, to celebrate and relish their victory, then tomorrow I start hounding everyone in the President's office to get a move on. These kids have waited long enough.