Libreville – Sao Tome and Principe, a tiny Portuguese-speaking island nation of some 210 000 inhabitants located in the Gulf of Guinea, was voting on Sunday to elect a new president in a country considered a regional model of democracy.
Nineteen candidates – a record – are vying to succeed Evaristo Carvalho, president since 2016, who has decided not to stand again.
As in Portugal, the former colonial power until 1975, the president of the republic may arbitrate disputes but does not govern.
Polling stations opened in the morning in the two-round election, the head of the national election commission, Fernando Maquengo, said.
Several coup attempts
The archipelago opened up to a multiparty system in 1991, after 15 years of single-party rule by a Marxist regime following a pattern seen in other former Portuguese colonies.
Despite several coup attempts, parliamentary democracy is strong, occasionally seeing transfers of power between the two main political groups.
The two rivals are the centre-right Independent Democratic Action party (ADI) and the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe (MLSTP), the former sole ruling party but now a centre-left movement.
Now in parliamentary power, the MLSTP stands behind Guilherme Posser da Costa, 68, former prime minister and three times foreign minister.
But five other members of the MLSTP are running against him as independent candidates.
Little-known figure
They include Elsa Pinto, former foreign minister, Jorge Amado, a former party president, and Maria das Neves, a former prime minister who was the party’s candidate in last presidential elections in 2016.
The ADI’s candidate is Carlos Vila Nova, a little-known figure to the general public, who previously served as minister of infrastructure.
The speaker of the National Assembly, Delfim das Neves, who occupies that post thanks to his party’s alliance with the MLSTP, is the official candidate of the Party for Democratic Convergence (PCD).
Sao Tome exports cocoa and coffee and also lives on subsistence farming, fishing and tourism, but it remains 90 percent dependent on international aid.
According to the CIA World Factbook, a 2017 estimate found some 66% of the population of Sao Tome lives below the poverty line.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
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