Pre-independence The party was established in
Bissau on 19 September 1956 as the
African Party of Independence (
Partido Africano da Independência), and was based on the Movement for the National Independence of Portuguese Guinea (
Movimento para Independência Nacional da Guiné Portuguesa) founded in 1954 by
Henri Labéry and
Amílcar Cabral. The party had six founding members; Cabral, his brother
Luís,
Aristides Pereira, Fernando Fortes, Júlio Almeida and Elisée Turpin. In the context of the ongoing
Cold War, PAIGC guerrillas also received
Kalashnikovs from the
USSR and
recoilless rifles from the
People's Republic of China, with all three countries helping train guerrilla troops.
SFR Yugoslavia sent a small cache of weapons to PAIGC in 1966. The first party congress took place at liberated
Cassaca in February 1964, in which both the political and military arms of the PAIGC were assessed and reorganized, with a regular army (
Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People, FARP) to supplement the guerrilla forces (The People's Guerrillas).
Como Island was the site of a major
battle between PAIGC and Portuguese forces, in which the PAIGC took control of the island and resisted fierce counterattacks by the Portuguese, including airstrikes by FAP (Portuguese:
Força Aérea Portuguesa; Portuguese Air Force)
F-86 Sabres. Following the loss of Como Island, the
Portuguese army,
navy and the
air force (FAP) began the
Operation Trident, a
combined arms operation to retake the
island. The PAIGC fought fiercely, and the Portuguese took heavy casualties and gained ground slowly. Finally, after 71 days of fighting and 851 FAP combat sorties, the island was taken back by the Portuguese. However, less than two months later, the PAIGC would retake the island, as the Portuguese operation to capture it had depleted much of their invasion force, leaving the island vulnerable. However, Como Island ceased to be of strategic importance to Portugal following establishment of new PAIGC positions in the south, especially on the
Cantanhez and
Quitafine Peninsulas. Large numbers of Portuguese troops on these peninsulas were encircled and besieged by guerrillas. Throughout the war, the Portuguese handled themselves poorly. It took them a long time to finally take the PAIGC seriously, diverting aircraft and troops based in Guinea to the conflicts in Mozambique and Angola, and by the time that the Portuguese government began to realise that the PAIGC was a significant threat to their continued rule over Guinea, it was too late. Very little was done to curtail the guerrilla operations; the Portuguese didn't try to sever the link between the populace and the PAIGC until very late in the war, and as a result, it became very dangerous for Portuguese troops to operate far from their fortresses. By 1967, the PAIGC had carried out 147 attacks on Portuguese barracks and army encampments, and effectively controlled two-thirds of
Portuguese Guinea. The following year, Portugal began a new campaign against the guerrillas with the arrival of the new governor of the colony,
António de Spínola. Spínola began a massive construction campaign, building
schools,
hospitals, new
housing and improving
telecommunications and the
road system, in an attempt to gain public favour in Guinea. PAIGC was the first African party to establish a
comprehensive cooperative program with Sweden. However, in 1970, the FAP began to use similar weapons to those the
US was using in the
Vietnam War:
napalm and
defoliants, the former to destroy guerrillas when they could find them, the latter to decrease the number of ambushes that occurred when they could not. Spínola's tenure as governor marked a turning point in the war: Portugal began to win battles, and in the
Operation Green Sea, a Portuguese raid on
Conakry, in the neighbouring
Republic of Guinea, 400 amphibious troops attacked the city and freed 26 Portuguese
prisoners of war kept there by the PAIGC. The USSR and Cuba began to send more weapons to Portuguese Guinea via
Nigeria, notably several
Ilyushin Il-14 aircraft to use as bombers. Between August and November 1972 the party held
elections to regional councils, whose members then elected a National Assembly. Whilst previous elections held by the Portuguese authorities saw suffrage limited to a few thousand people meeting tax and literacy requirements, these were arguably the first elections held in the territory under
universal suffrage. Voters were presented with a list of PAIGC candidates, and had the choice to vote for or against. Around 78,000 people took part in the election, with 97% voting for the lists. On 20 January 1973 Amílcar Cabral, was
assassinated by naval commander Inocêncio Kani as part of a plan within the PAIGC to overthrow the leadership. However, despite Cabral's death, the plot failed to topple the leadership, and 94 people were subsequently found guilty of involvement, complicity or suspected complicity. Kani and at least ten others were executed in March. Later in the year independence was unilaterally declared on 24 September 1973 and was recognized by a 93–7 UN General Assembly vote in November, unprecedented as it denounced the Portuguese colonial rule as aggression and occupation. The UN recognition was prior to Portuguese recognition. The conflict had seen 1,875 Portuguese soldiers (out of 35,000 stationed in Portuguese Guinea) and some 6,000 (out of 10,000) PAIGC troops killed by the end of the eleven-year war.
Gallery ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - G 23 - Life in Ziguinchor, Senegal - Carrying weapons to Hermangono, Guinea-Bissau - 1973.tif|PAIGC soldiers loading weapons on a truck, Guinea-Bissau, 1973 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - G 24 - Life in Ziguinchor, Senegal - Carrying weapons to Hermangono, Guinea-Bissau - 1973.tif|Kalashnikovs for Hermangono, 1973 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - 2 17 - PAIGC soldiers in Guinea-Bissau - Woman PAIGC soldier playing cards - 1973.tif|Female soldier playing cards, Guinea-Bissau, 1973 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - G 16 - Life in Ziguinchor, Senegal - Learning how to shoot - 1973.tif|PAIGC recruits learning how to shoot, Ziguinchor, Senegal, 1973 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - 7 26 - Portuguese plane shot down in Guinea-Bissau - 1974.tif|Portuguese plane shot down in Guinea-Bissau with PAIGC soldiers, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - 4 15 - PAIGC soldiers and their families in a military camp, Guinea-Bissau - 1974.tif|PAIGC soldier with his family in a military camp, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - F 27 - Farim, Northern frontline, Guinea-Bissau - Children's drawings - 1974.tif|Drawings showing PAIGC soldiers, Farim, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - C 39 - Walk from Candjambary to Sara, Guinea-Bissau - Village burnt down by the Portuguese - 1974.tif|Village burnt down by the Portuguese, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - 19 11 - Manten military base in the liberated areas, Guinea-Bissau - 1974.tif|PAIGC soldier with a rocket-propelled grenade, Manten military base in the liberated areas, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - D 20 - Hermangono, Guinea-Bissau - Morning roll-call in Hermangono - 1974.tiff|Morning roll call, Hermangono, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - C 37 - Candjambary, Guinea-Bissau - Unexploded bomb - 1974.tif|Unexploded Portuguese bomb, Canjambari, Guinea-Bissau, 1974 ASC Leiden - Coutinho Collection - F 37 - Life in Sara, Guinea-Bissau - Armed escort carrying the wounded to the Senegalese border - 1974.tif|Armed escort carries a wounded person to the Senegalese border, Sara, Guinea-Bissau, 1974
Post-independence After achieving independence, the PAIGC was instituted as the sole legal political party of
Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, with
Luís Cabral becoming President of Guinea-Bissau. A second set of
one-party elections were held in 1976 and 1977. Although the PAIGC strove for a union between Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, the union finally broke down following a
military coup led by
João Bernardo Vieira against Luís Cabral in November 1980. The Cape Verdean branch of PAIGC was subsequently converted into a separate party, the
African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Under Vieira, the party continued to govern the country in the 1980s and 1990s. One-party elections were held in
1984 and
1989, and Vieira was re-elected as PAIGC Secretary-General at the party's fourth congress in November 1986. Following the introduction of multi-party politics in May 1991, the first multi-party elections were held in 1994. The
general elections also saw the introduction of the direct election of the president. Vieira beat
Kumba Ialá of the
Party for Social Renewal (PRS) in the run-off, while the PAIGC won 62 out of 100 seats in the National People's Assembly with 46% of the vote. Vieira was re-elected for another four-year term as President of PAIGC in mid-May 1998 at the party's sixth congress, with 438 votes in favor, eight opposed, and four abstaining; the post of Secretary-General was abolished at this congress. A few days later, former Prime Minister
Manuel Saturnino da Costa was named acting President of the PAIGC on 12 May 1999. Vieira was expelled from PAIGC at a party congress in September 1999 for "treasonable offences, support and incitement to warfare, and practices incompatible with the statutes of the party".
Francisco Benante, the leader of reformists within the party and the only civilian in the transitional military junta, was elected as the President of PAIGC at the end of the congress on 9 September 1999. Benante's candidacy was supported by the junta, and he received 174 votes against 133 votes for the only opposing candidate. In May 2004 it formed a government with party leader,
Carlos Gomes Júnior becoming prime minister. In the
2005 presidential election, PAIGC candidate Malam Bacai Sanhá was defeated in the second round by Vieira, who had returned from exile and ran as an independent. A few weeks after taking office, Vieira dismissed Carlos Gomes Júnior as prime minister and appointed
Aristides Gomes, who had formerly been a high-ranking member of PAIGC but had left the party to support Vieira. In March 2007, the PAIGC formed a three-party alliance with the PRS and the
United Social Democratic Party as the three parties sought to form a new government. This led to a successful no-confidence vote against Aristides Gomes and his resignation late in the month; on 9 April
Martinho Ndafa Kabi, the choice of the three parties, was appointed prime minister by Vieira, and on 17 April a new government was named, composed of ministers from the three parties. PAIGC withdrew its backing for Kabi on 29 February 2008, stating that this was done "to avoid acts of indiscipline threatening cohesion and unity in the party". The PAIGC's seventh Ordinary Congress was held in
Gabú in June 2008. Malam Bacai Sanhá, the party's presidential candidate in 2000 and 2005, challenged Gomes for the party leadership, but Gomes was re-elected for a five-year term as President of PAIGC by a vote of 578–355. Kabi,
Cipriano Cassama (considered a dissident within the party and associated with Aristides Gomes), and
Baciro Dja also contested the leadership election, but attracted comparatively little support. Vieira then dismissed Kabi and appointed
Carlos Correia as prime minister on 5 August.
Parliamentary elections were subsequently held in November 2008, with the PAIGC winning two-thirds of the seats. In
presidential elections the following year, Sanhá defeated Kumba Ialá in the run-off. After Sanhá's death in January 2012,
early presidential elections were held. Carlos Gomes Júnior was nominated as the PAIGC candidate, and advanced to the runoff alongside Iála, but a
military coup in April prevented it taking place.
General elections were eventually held in 2014, and saw PAIGC candidate
José Mário Vaz elected president, whilst the party also retained its majority in the National People's Assembly, winning 57 of the 102 seats. The party contested the
2023 legislative election as part of a broad coalition, the Inclusive Alliance Platform – Terra Ranka, that included
UM,
PCD,
PSD and
MDG and won a majority of the seats. ==Election results==