Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires (born 29 April 1934) has been the President of Cape Verde since March 2001. Before becoming President he was Prime Minister from 1975 to 1991.
After the ruling African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) decided to institute multiparty democracy in February 1990, Pires replaced President Aristides Pereira as General Secretary of PAICV in August 1990. The PAICV lost the multiparty parliamentary and presidential elections held in early 1991 and was left in opposition. At a party congress in August 1993, Pires was replaced as General Secretary by Aristides Lima and was instead elected as President of PAICV. He later stepped down from his post as President of PAICV and was replaced by José Maria Neves.[1]
Pires was the PAICV candidate in the February 2001 presidential election, defeating former Prime Minister Carlos Veiga of the Movement for Democracy (MpD) in the second round by an extremely narrow margin.[2][3][4] Pires took office on March 22; the MpD boycotted his inauguration, saying that the election was marred by a "non-transparent process".[5] As President, Pires appointed Neves as Prime Minister.[1] He ran for a second term in the presidential election held on 12 February 2006 and again prevailed over Veiga, this time winning in the first round, but still with a small margin of 50.98% against 49.02% for Veiga.[4]
In May 2008, he said that he favored a cautious, long-term approach to the formation of a United States of Africa, preferring that regional integration precede a continent-wide union. He attended the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-IV) at this time.[6]
References
- ^ a b Political Parties of the World (6th edition, 2005), ed. Bogdan Szajkowski, page 113.
- ^ "New president for Cape Verde", BBC News, March 6, 2001.
- ^ "Cape Verde: National Election Commission declares Pedro Pires as new president", Televisao Publica de Angola (nl.newsbank.com), March 5, 2001.
- ^ a b Elections in Cape Verde, African Elections Database.
- ^ "Cape Verde: Main opposition party boycotts presidential inauguration", PANA news agency (nl.newsbank.com), March 23, 2001.
- ^ "Presidente cabo-verdiano prudente sobre Estados Unidos de África", Panapress, May 28, 2008 (Portuguese).
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