Pedro Pires turns 90 today with the advantage of having participated in and witnessed “great changes”

“Ninety years gives us the advantage of having lived through great changes and being able to participate in great changes”, he told Inforpress when invited to talk about the different phases of his life.

He claimed to have lived through the great change of the colonial struggle and the great change of the construction of the other Cape Verde, but that he also lived long enough to know that in 1939/40 there was no television.

He also compares this situation of not having television with the great technological advances we are experiencing today and with the possibility of having a cell phone to communicate.

“I didn’t know about telephones in the interior of Fogo, but I’m the same person who today uses a cell phone and speaks to Japan, sitting in the city of Praia. But also in terms of medicine, what has been invented from the 40s to today”, he reported with great satisfaction at having witnessed major transformations in the world.

The former President of the Republic also remembers that when he was young, what he had in his wallet was an inkwell and a wooden pen to write with, and later said that the world has changed completely and posing many challenges to society through artificial intelligence.

He points out the possibility of inventing man as a challenge of the future in which he disagrees, as he said, “man is man and life must be sacred” and reveals his doubts about what the world will be like with this invention.

“For me there is this question of what the future will be like and how will my grandchildren live? Knowledge and inventions are good, but it is important to know how to use them and what they should be used for. To crush others or to make a fairer world?”, leaves the question that worries him as he reaches 90 years of age.

And to conclude, he highlighted that his great boldness in life was having to take on the leadership of Cape Verde, a bankrupt country that was reformed until it reached the present day.

He boasts about these great achievements and also for having contributed to the democratic opening in 1991, in Cape Verde.

Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires was born in São Filipe, Fogo, on the 29th of April 1934, he studied at the University of Lisbon where he left to participate in the armed struggle in Guinea-Bissau and, after the 25th of April, he was the representative of Cape Verde in the negotiations with Portugal.

On July 5, 1975, he was appointed Prime Minister of the first Government of the Republic of Cape Verde, remaining in the position of Prime Minister until 1991, and was President of the Republic from March 22, 2001 until September 9, 2011 .

Inforpress