The country’s first president, Manuel Pinto da Costa of the MLSTP, was elected in 1975. The government initially followed eastern European models of political and economic organization. Economic decline and popular dissatisfaction, however, led to a process of liberalization that started in 1985 and culminated in the establishment of a multiparty democracy in 1990.

Pinto da Costa was succeeded in 1991 by Miguel Trovoada, a former prime minister who ran for the presidency unopposed in the first free elections in the country’s history. In August 1995 Trovoada was deposed in a bloodless coup orchestrated by the military. However, coup leaders reconsidered their demands when faced with the immediate threat of the loss of foreign aid, and Trovoada was reinstated as president a week later.

Trovoada was reelected in 1996 but was barred from seeking a third term in the 2001 election. He was succeeded by businessman Fradique de Menezes of Independent Democratic Action (Portuguese: Acção Democrática Independente; ADI), the party with which Trovoada had been affiliated since 1994. Within months of de Menezes’s election, a power struggle erupted between the new president and the National Assembly, which was dominated by the renamed MLSTP–Social Democratic Party (Portuguese: MLSTP–Partido Social Democrata; MLSTP-PSD), establishing a pattern of political conflict that continued for some time. In 2003 de Menezes was deposed in a military coup, but international negotiations were successful in guaranteeing his reinstatement on the condition that the coup leaders would not be punished for their actions. De Menezes was reelected in 2006, representing the Democratic Movement Force for Change (Portuguese: Movimento Democrático Força da Mudança), a party that had splintered from the ADI in late 2001.

Although several fair and peaceful legislative and presidential elections had been held in the 1990s and 2000s, they did not immediately transform the country’s oversized and inefficient public administration from a centre of cronyism and corruption into an efficient bureaucracy that could provide the structural conditions of a functioning market economy. Consequently, the country’s tremendous social and economic problems were far from resolved at the start of the 21st century, although the earnings from petroleum concessions beginning in the mid-2000s and the potential for future oil revenues brought a sense of optimism, as did significant debt relief granted in 2007.

Under the terms of the constitution, de Menezes, like Trovoada before him, was prohibited from seeking a third term as president, and several candidates stood in the 2011 presidential election to succeed him. The two front-runners from the first round of voting, held in July, were former president Pinto da Costa, running as an independent candidate, and the speaker of the National Assembly, Evaristo Carvalho, who was the ADI’s candidate. When the two met again in the runoff election, held on August 7, 2011, Pinto da Costa garnered 52 percent of the vote to narrowly beat Carvalho. In National Assembly elections held in October 2014, the ADI was able to win 33 of the body’s 55 seats, giving it a majority, and Patrice Trovoada (ADI) was appointed prime minister the next month. The son of former president Miguel Trovoada, Patrice had previously served as prime minister in 2008 and again in 2010–12.

Pinto da Costa and Carvalho faced each other again, as well as three other candidates, in the presidential election held on July 17, 2016. This time Carvalho came out in front, narrowly winning the first round with 50.1 percent of the vote and therefore avoiding the need for a runoff election. Pinto da Costa came in second, with 24.8 percent. After the counting of late-arriving ballots from absentee voters and from voters in areas where the poll had been delayed, Carvalho’s percentage was reduced to 49.88, thus necessitating a runoff election between himself and Pinto da Costa. As the runoff drew near, however, Pinto da Costa announced that he was boycotting it, citing alleged irregularities in the first round of voting. The runoff election, held on August 7, was won by Carvalho. National Assembly elections held in October 2018 saw the ADI lose its majority in the body. The MLSTP-PSD won more seats than it previously had, though it still fell short of a majority. However, it was able to join with other parties to form a governing coalition, and Jorge Bom Jesus (MLSTP-PSD) became prime minister in December.

Carvalho chose not to run for reelection, and 19 candidates stood to succeed him in the next presidential election, held on July 18, 2021. As no one candidate received a majority of the vote, the two top vote getters, the ADI’s Carlos Vila Nova and the MLSTP-PSD’s Guilherme Posser da Costa, advanced to a runoff scheduled to be held on August 8. However, a legal challenge to the first-round results mounted by the third-place candidate, Delfim Neves, delayed the runoff election until September 5. Vila Nova was declared the winner, with more than 57 percent of the vote.