The Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde has 491,575 registered voters. On 17 May, according to multiple outlets 71315, a majority of them chose not to vote. The African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde won 37 seats in the 72-member National Assembly — enough to govern, not enough to convince the country it had asked for one. Abstention, as João Santos Luís put it to Inforpress 15, won the election.
“A majority of seats is a technical condition. A majority of trust is not.”
This is not new. Cape Verde's turnout has been declining for a decade. What is new is that a government formed on the back of record abstention must now govern as though it were wanted. The Parliamentary Party expressed disappointment 23514 that the result would continue to polarise the chamber. One reads that and thinks: polarisation is not the country's most pressing democratic symptom when half the country has stopped showing up.
Francisco Carvalho, named prime minister-designate 134624, gave a speech about a "new Cape Verde" after his party's victory 10. It is hard to build a new country with the votes of the old half. The Movement for Democracy lost its absolute majority 345617; Ulisses Correia e Silva resigned 518; Jónica Brito's party doubled its vote and claimed itself "one of the winners" 13 for preventing that majority. All of this happened in a room where the chairs were mostly empty.
The photograph next to a parliamentary story is always of a wide, almost empty room — rows of desks, a few figures at lecterns, light from tall windows. One imagines the Praia assembly chamber will look much like that for the next term. Not because the seats are unfilled, but because the people who might have wanted someone in them have stopped caring which name sits there. A majority of seats is a technical condition. A majority of trust is not.
Carvalho has his government. The question is whether he has a country that thinks it needs one.