Sao Tome and Principe voted on Sunday in a presidential election where incumbent Carlos Vila Nova sought a new five-year term after falling out with the country’s most powerful political party. The vote put the machinery of state back on display in a small cocoa-producing island nation, where the people are asked to choose between elite factions while the real levers of power stay concentrated above them.
Vila Nova, a former public works and infrastructure minister, won the last election in 2021 in a runoff with the backing of the Independent Democratic Action party, known by its Portuguese acronym ADI. That party holds a majority of seats in the National Assembly. Last year, Vila Nova dismissed Patrice Trovoada as prime minister, and the split with ADI left him running as an independent against three other candidates. The arrangement says plenty about how formal democracy works when the party apparatus fractures: the names change, the structure remains.
Who Holds the Levers
The election came after Vila Nova broke with ADI, the most powerful political party in the country. He is now seeking another term without the backing that helped carry him to victory five years ago. His main challenger, Nito Abreu, said he would focus on creating jobs for youth and stem what he described as an exodus of young people from the country. That’s the human cost sitting underneath the polished language of campaigns and ballots: young people leaving, work scarce, and the political class offering promises while the island’s future gets drained away.
Sao Tome and Principe is made up of two main islands and has a population of around 240,000. A former Portuguese colony situated off the western coast of Africa, it has enjoyed a history of free and peaceful elections since the adoption of multiparty politics in 1990. The official story is one of calm procedure. But calm doesn’t mean power has been shared. It often just means the hierarchy has learned to present itself neatly.
What the Institutions Call Stability
The government announced in 2022 that it had thwarted a coup attempt, the first in nearly two decades, involving at least one member of a South African apartheid-era militia known as the Buffalo Battalion. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, linked to the U.S. Department of Defense, said in a briefing that Sunday’s election was a chance to show such violence is “an isolated aberration rather than an ongoing feature of national politics.” That’s the language of institutions trying to reassure everyone that the system is still in control, even after the state itself admitted a coup attempt had been thwarted.
There were 142,298 eligible voters, according to the election commission. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and were scheduled to close at 6 p.m., with preliminary results expected late on Sunday or on Monday. A second round will be held if no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote. Legislative elections are planned for September. The calendar keeps moving. The structure keeps asking people to wait for the next round, the next vote, the next managed choice.
The Promise and the Limits
Sao Tome and Principe was once seen as a potential oil producer, but the sector has failed to produce major finds. That failure hangs over the country like a broken promise from above. The political class can campaign, split, and realign, but the island nation still sits with the same basic reality: limited resources, a small population, and a system where decisions are made far from ordinary people’s lives.
Vila Nova’s path back to office runs through the same institutions that elevated him before. ADI still holds a majority in the National Assembly. Legislative elections are planned for September. The machinery is intact, even when the alliances aren’t. And that’s the whole game: a state that keeps its procedures, a political class that keeps its seats, and a public told to treat the whole thing as freedom because the ballots are counted in the open.