{"id":27537,"date":"2016-08-08T02:12:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T02:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/sao-tome-and-principe-president-boycotts-own-run\/"},"modified":"2016-08-08T02:12:09","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T02:12:09","slug":"sao-tome-and-principe-president-boycotts-own-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/sao-tome-and-principe-president-boycotts-own-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Sao Tome and Principe president boycotts own run-off vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{In an unusual move, the president of the west African state of Sao Tome and Principe has boycotted his own run-off election, handing victory to his rival.}<\/p>\n<p>Manuel Pinto da Costa withdrew from Sunday&#8217;s poll, alleging fraud in the first round held on 17 July.<\/p>\n<p>His rival Evaristo Carvalho, a former prime minister, is now certain to win the race.<br \/>\nHe had won the first round with 49.8% of the vote while Mr Pinto da Costa had taken 24.8%.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of Sunday&#8217;s run-off, he had called on his supporters not to vote, and later reports said many of them had stayed away.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Pinto da Costa ruled Sao Tome with an iron fist for the first 15 years after independence from Portugal in 1975.<\/p>\n<p>He lost the presidency after introducing reforms in 1990, including multi-party democracy, but in 2011, he was re-elected to office.<\/p>\n<p>Sao Tome and Principe, a former Portuguese colony, consists of two islands of volcanic origin and a number of smaller islets lying off the western coast of Africa.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-14040 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_90706071_43b581cf-290a-484e-b10c-5bdddc8b58f0.jpg\" alt=\"President Pinto da Costa called on his supporters not to take part in Sunday&#039;s run-off\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{In an unusual move, the president of the west African state of Sao Tome and Principe has boycotted his own run-off election, handing victory to his rival.} Manuel Pinto da Costa withdrew from Sunday&#8217;s poll, alleging fraud in the first round held on 17 July. His rival Evaristo Carvalho, a former prime minister, is now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27537"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27537"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}