Pedro Pires

Pedro de Verona Rodrigues Pires (; born 29 April 1934) is a Cape Verdean politician who served as Prime Minister of Cape Verde from 1975 to 1991, and later as President from 2001 to 2011. Life and career Pires was born in São Filipe, Fogo, Cape Verde to Luís Rodrigues Pires and wife Maria Fidalga Lopes. Later, he studied at Liceu Gil Eanes (Old High School) and Escola Jorge Barbosa in Mindelo during the 1950s and later abroad at the University of Lisbon in Portugal at the Faculty of Sciences. He fled to Conakry in 1962, then Ghana and afterwards headed to Algeria; he was trained in Cuba, the Soviet Union and Guinea-Bissau. He attended the Second PAIGC Congress in 1973. Before independence, he returned to Praia, Cape Verde on a Portuguese military ship on October 13, 1974. Prime Minister Three days after the country became independent in 1975, he became the first Prime Minister of Cape Verde; the nation at the time was a one-party state under the rule of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). He opposed apartheid in South Africa and opposed foreign intervention in Africa. On October 20–22, 1980, he visited Paris. He visited that city again in 1989 and met with French Prime Minister Michel Rocard on 11 May 1989. He held additional portfolio of Minister of Finance from 1986 to 1990. After the ruling PAICV decided to institute multiparty democracy in February 1990, Pires replaced President Aristides Pereira as General Secretary of PAICV in August 1990. The PAICV lost the multiparty parliamentary and presidential elections held in early 1991 and was left in opposition.