Cape Verde’s main opposition party has won an absolute majority in parliamentary elections, ending a decade in power for the centrist government of the Atlantic archipelago.
The African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde, known by its Portuguese initials PAICV, took 33 of the 72 seats in the National Assembly in Saturday’s vote, a gain of three. The governing Movement for Democracy fell to 30 seats, down eight, while the Democratic and Independent Cape Verdean Union held two.
The result was close in the popular vote. PAICV won about 47.9 per cent, or 88,985 ballots, against 44.8 per cent for the Movement for Democracy. Turnout was low, with only 46.6 per cent of registered voters taking part.
PAICV, a democratic-socialist party with roots in the movement that won the islands their independence from Portugal in 1975, will now form a government under its leader, Francisco Carvalho, its candidate for prime minister.
The outgoing prime minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, who had governed since 2016, announced that he would resign as leader of the Movement for Democracy, which will take up the role of opposition.
Cape Verde, a stable multiparty democracy of about half a million people, is regularly cited as one of Africa’s best-functioning democracies, with power alternating peacefully between its two main parties since the early 1990s.
Attention now turns to a presidential election scheduled for November, the next test for a country whose economy leans heavily on tourism and on remittances from a large diaspora.