Manuel Pinto da Costa

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Manuel Pinto da Costa

Manuel Pinto da Costa (born August 5, 1937 in Água Grande ) is an economist and politician from São Tomé and Príncipe . Pinto da Costa received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin and speaks fluent German as well as Portuguese. From 1975 to 1991 and from 2011 to 2016 he was president of his country. In his first term in office, Pinto da Costa led the country with a hard hand and played an important role in the struggle for independence from Portugal .

Life

Early years

Pinto grew up on the island of São Tomé, which was part of Portugal at the time, and received a doctorate in economics . He spent part of his studies in the GDR . In the early 1960s he joined the independence movement CLSTP, which operated from Gabon . He later became the founder and general secretary of the movement, which was renamed Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP) in 1972. He was a member of the founding board of the UGEAN ( União Geral das Estudantes da Africa Negra sob dominação colonial portuguesa ) founded in 1961 the student association of the Portuguese colonies in Africa .

president

With the independence of the archipelago from Portugal on July 12, 1975, he became the first president and the MLSTP unity party . In March 1979 he also took over the functions of head of government. The office was only reinstated in 1988. In addition, he temporarily held other ministerial posts such as that of the foreign minister himself. His government has been confronted with coup attempts on several occasions , the last being on March 8, 1988, a group of 44 armed men tried to assassinate him. In addition, he had to assert himself against competitors within the MLSTP, such as his Defense Minister Daniel Lima dos Santos Daio , whose office he took over in 1982. Until the mid-1980s, under his leadership, the country leaned closely to the Eastern Bloc and pursued a socialist policy. In the course of democratization, his party had called itself MLSTP-PSD since October 1990 and has since followed a social-democratic course. At the same time, Carlos da Graça became the new General Secretary. He did not run for the first free presidential election and was replaced on April 3, 1991 by his former Prime Minister Miguel Trovoada , who was dismissed in 1979 and temporarily imprisoned . The MLSTP-PSD had previously lost its leading role in the parliamentary elections on January 20, 1991.

Opposition politician

In the following years his party strengthened again and was again the strongest party in the parliamentary elections on October 3, 1994 with 27 out of 55 seats. He himself ran against Trovoada in 1996 for the presidency and was defeated on July 27, 1996 in the second ballot with 47.3% of the vote. Five years later he ran again and this time lost on July 29, 2001 in the first ballot with 38.73% against Fradique de Menezes , who ran for Trovoada's party Ação Democrática Independente (ADI). Despite the two defeats, his party was able to maintain its leading position in parliamentary elections.

In May 1998 he was elected president of the MLSTP-PSD and remained in office until February 2005 when Guilherme Posser da Costa succeeded him. In 2002 riflemen attacked his office. The background to the act remained unclear. Together with other former heads of state and government, he belongs to the African Statesmen Initiative , which works to spread democracy in Africa. Manuel Pinto da Costa was sent by his country as ambassador to the International Parliament for Safety and Peace, an intergovernmental organization based in Italy, where he is chairman of the department for foreign affairs.

Another presidency

In the presidential elections that took place on July 17, 2011, he was the most promising candidate to succeed President Fradique de Menezes , but they were only decided in a runoff election. On August 7th, he won the second round of the presidential election with 52.88 percent, or 35,112 votes. His opponent Evaristo Carvalho was able to unite 31,287 votes, that is 47.12 percent. On September 3, 2011 he took over the office again.

In the 2016 presidential election, he reached the second round, but decided not to run for the runoff between himself and his challenger Evaristo Carvalho on August 7, 2016. Accordingly, Evaristo Carvalho succeeded him on September 3, 2016 in the office of President.

Web links

Commons : Manuel Pinto da Costa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Federal Foreign Office: Relations with Germany accessed August 8, 2011
  2. Biography ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.biografo.info
  3. Thüringer Allgemeine: Presidential election in São Tomé and Príncipe  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed July 18, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / ilmenau.thueringer-allgemeine.de  
  4. Diário de Noticias: Pinto da Costa ganha eleições em São Tomé  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed August 8, 2011 (pt)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.dn.pt  
  5. Público: Manuel Pinto da Costa eleito Presidente de São Tomé ( Memento of the original of March 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed August 8, 2011 (pt) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.publico.pt
  6. David Signer: political farce on the Atlantic archipelago. Runoff election with a single candidate in the tiny African island state of São Tomé and Príncipe . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 9, 2016, p. 5.