Former Prime Minister José Maria Neves was elected president of Cape Verde on Sunday with 51.5% of the votes cast, according to provisional results published by the Electoral commission.
With 96% of the votes counted, he is well ahead of Carlos Veiga, of the Movement for Democracy (MpD, center-right, majority in Parliament). Mr. Veiga, 71, is also a former prime minister, having led from 1991 to 2000. He obtained 42.6% of the vote, according to the same results.
The other five candidates in the race together received about 6 per cent of the vote. According to the preliminary results, the abstention rate was about 51.8 per cent. Just over three hours after the polls closed, Mr. Veiga, who also had the support of UCID, the third largest force in parliament, called the winner to congratulate him. The archipelago’s consolidates the reputation as one of the most stable and best governed countries in Africa.
These results have yet to be validated by the electoral commission. If they are, it will be cohabitation at the head of Cape Verde. On April 18, voters re-elected the MpD of Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva won 38 seats, ahead of the PAICV of Janira Hopffer Almada (30 seats out of 72).
The president’s scope of action is limited. Cape Verde has a semi-parliamentary system, with the Prime Minister, the government and the parliament having a large say. A total of 398,864 Cape Verdeans, including more than 56,000 in the diaspora, were expected to vote.
The incumbent president, Jorge Carlos Fonseca of the MpD, could not run for a third consecutive term, having already won the 2011 and 2016 elections.