Cape Verde presidential election: What you need to know
Al Jazeera
Record seven candidates running, with two ex-PMs – Carlos Veiga and José Maria Neves – seen as the strongest contenders.
Voters in the island nation of Cape Verde are set to cast ballots on Sunday to elect the country’s next president.
The polls mark the end of the second and last mandate of Jorge Carlos Fonseca, the fourth president in Cape Verde’s history, since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975. A second round of voting is provisionally scheduled for October 31, if no single candidate receives a majority.
This will be the seventh round of elections since Cape Verde’s transition to free and multiparty elections in 1991. The 10-island archipelago off West Africa’s coast is often praised as an exemplary democracy in the continent, as it continues to rank high amongst indexes of transparency and political freedom.
