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São Tomé and Príncipe São Tomé and Príncipe In August, Manuel Pinto da Costa, the country’s first president, in office from 1975 to 1991, became the third democratically elected president. Foreign tourism investments in Príncipe provoked a conflict between the island’s regional government and the central government. The Angolan oil company Sonangol took control of São Tomé’s harbour and airport, while the country’s oil sector made little progress. Domestic politics On 7 August, 74-year old Manuel Pinto da Costa, the country’s first post-independence head of state during the socialist one-party regime (1975–91), won the run-off in the presidential elections and became his country’s third democratically elected president, succeeding Miguel Trovoada (1991–2001) and Fradique de Menezes (2001–11). Pinto da Costa, ex-leader of the ‘Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe/Partido Social Democrata’ (MLSTP/PSD), ran as an independent candidate. He defeated Evaristo Car- valho, president of the National Assembly and candidate of the ruling ‘Acção Democrática Independente’ (ADI) with 52.9% against 47.1% of the votes. Pinto da Costa owed his vic- tory to the absence of a charismatic rival candidate and the local electorate’s traditional preference for having a prime minister and a president from different parties. He returned 274 • Central Africa to the presidency after a lean period of 20 years and two failed attempts to return to the highest office through the ballot box, in 1996 and 2001 respectively. Altogether 14 contenders registered their candidature for the presidential elections scheduled for 17 July, but most of them were predicted to stand no chance. Ten candidates eventually ran for the presidency, since one withdrew and three others were excluded by the Supreme Court because they had dual nationality, which is prohibited under the elec- toral law. Besides Evaristo Carvalho, two other candidates were endorsed by political parties: Aurélio Martins, the leader of the MLSTP/PSD, and Defim Neves, vice-president of the ‘Partido de Convergência Democrática’ (PCD). The nomination of Martins, who had been elected as the new party chairman with 73% of the votes in January, was fiercely contested as irregular by two other aspirants for the party nomination: Maria das Neves, a former prime minister, and Elsa Pinto, a former minister of defence, who both dedided to run as independent candidates. Pinto da Costa won the first round with 21,457 votes (33.9%), while Carvalho came second with 13,125 votes (20.1%). Delfim Neves and Maria das Neves received 13.7% and 13.4% of the ballots respectively. Three candidates received less than 5% of the votes, while the other three got less than 1%. Elsa Pinto obtained only 4.2% of the ballots, but still more than her party’s official candidate, Aurélio Martins, who received 3.8%. Martins was the greatest loser in these elections, since he received the worst result of the four com- petitors coming from the MLSTP/PSD, even though he was the official party candidate. The turn-out was 68.4% of a total of 92,638 registered voters. On 8 December, anonymous protesters in Príncipe burnt the national flag in front of the seat of the island’s Regional Government. They spread pamphlets with anti-government slogans and demanding independence for the small, 142 km² island, an autonomous region within the twin-island nation since 1995. The action was immediately condemned by Defence Minister Carlos Stock and Nestor Umbelina, secretary of infrastructure of Prínc- ipe’s Regional Government, who promised to take all measures to find the culprits. While the burning of the flag in Príncipe took everybody by surprise, its timing was by no means arbitrary, since it occurred while José Cassandra, head of the Regional Government since 2006, was staying in São Tomé to renegotiate with the Trovoada government the terms of a development project for Príncipe, signed in February between the Regional Govern- ment and the South African computer software entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. The central government contested the legality of several terms of the € 70 m investment agreement with Shuttleworth’s company HBD Boa Vida (HBD stands for “Here be Drag- ons”, referring to unexplored territory), including the concession of tax exemptions, argu- ing that they were subject to national legislation since they would surpass the competences of Príncipe’s Regional Government. In addition, the deal with HBD ignored a previous agreement on the production of palm-oil signed by the central government with the Bel- gian company SOCFINCO in 2010. Under this agreement SOCFINCO’s local subsidiary, Agripalma, received a 25-year concession to develop 5,000 ha of oil-palm plantations on .
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