(3 minutes read)
- Nearly 400,000 voters, including over 50,000 outside the country, had already chosen a successor to Jorge Carlos Fonseca
- He could not contest again because of the constitutional limit of 10 years set for the president to hold the office
- Tourism contributes for a quarter of the economy of the tiny west African nation and the sector is in doldrums due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic
Cape Verde had held the polling on Sunday (yesterday) to elect a new president. The country, which mostly dependent on tourism for its revenue is facing a major slump in the arrival of tourists.
Nearly 400,000 voters, including over 50,000 outside the country, had already chosen a successor to Jorge Carlos Fonseca. He held the forte for over 10 years. He could not contest again because of the constitutional limit of 10 years set for the president to hold the office. Tourism contributes for a quarter of the economy of the tiny west African nation. This sector is in doldrums due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
Apart from dwindling tourist arrivals, inflation is also a factor to reckon with. In 2020, the GDP shrank by 14.8 percent. Many hotels and restaurants were closed. Prices of water and electricity have risen by 37 percent. The two probable winners for the post, among seven candidates, are former prime ministers: 72-year-old lawyer Carlos Veiga and academician Jose Maria Neves, 60. Veiga represents the centre-right Movement for Democracy (MpD). His party has a majority in parliament. Verde was a former colony of Portuguese.
Under Cape Verde’s semi-parliamentary political system, the prime minister has executive powers while the president acts as arbiter.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has deployed fifty five observers for the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (ECOWAS-EOM) to the Presidential Election.
