Ghana Opposition Leader Wins Presidency
Opposition leader John Atta Mills was declared Ghana’s next president Saturday in the closest electoral race this West African nation has ever seen. The peaceful ballot secured Ghana’s place as a beacon of democracy on a volatile continent.
Ghana also is now one of the few countries in Africa to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another.
Though buoyed by the recent discovery of oil, the 64-year-old tax expert who takes charge Wednesday of the world’s No. 2 cocoa producer will have to struggle with the effects of an economic downturn that could strain a nation whose anxious poor already complain wealth is not trickling down.
After the Dec. 7 election proved indecisive, Atta Mills won Sunday’s second round ballot by capturing a razor-thin victory with 50.23 percent of the vote _ or 4,521,032 ballots. Ruling party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo garnered 49.77 percent _ or 4,480,446 votes, Electoral Commission chairman Kwadwo Afari-Gyan said.
Opposition supporters thronged the streets after the announcement and jubilant drivers honked horns across the capital, Accra. Atta Mills told a pulsating crowd outside his campaign headquarters “the time has come to work together to build a better Ghana.”
But he appeared mindful of his thin mandate, adding: “I assure Ghanaians that I will be president for all.”
Akufo-Addo conceded defeat and congratulated his rival.
Atta Mills served as vice president under former coup leader Jerry Rawlings, who stepped down in 2001, and he will have to dispel any notion his rule could hark back to Rawling’s strongman era.
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But ensuring economic growth will be his biggest challenge. Ghana’s economy has been growing by more than 6 percent a year, investment is up 20-fold over the last decade, and oil is eventually expected to bring in between $2 and $3 billion a year.
But the New York-based Eurasia Group consulting firm says Ghana’s economy is projected to slow along with the rest of the world, and Atta Mills will “grapple with a growing budget … high rates of youth unemployment, falling remittance and aid levels, and surging inflation.”
Most Ghanaians remain among the world’s poorest, earning an average $3.80 a day. A tenth of the adult population is unemployed, and 40 percent are illiterate.
The historic ballot marked the third time Atta Mills ran for president. The vote was so close authorities had to rerun it Friday in one district that failed to take part in the second round because of a ballot shortage.
Peter Pham, an Africa expert at James Madison University in Virginia, said the election “is the first case in Africa I can think of where a country has seen two successive transfers of power from democratically elected incumbents to democratically elected successors.”
That the transfers were between opposing governing powers both times “is an important indicator of the vibrancy of a country’s democracy and the maturity of its political institutions,” Pham said.
Some analysts had feared violence. They pointed to Kenya, which also was a model of stability in Africa until a similarly tight 2007 race unleashed weeks of tribal bloodshed and mayhem.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who helped broker peace in Kenya last year flew home New Year’s Day and had been working quietly behind the scenes to calm tensions in his native Ghana. President John Kufuor also appeared instrumental, calling on both sides including his own ruling party to accept the results.
Born July 21, 1944, the meek-mannered Atta Mills spent much of his career teaching at the University of Ghana and served under Rawlings.
The married father earned a doctorate degree from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies before becoming a Fulbright scholar at California’s Stanford University.
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on January 3, 2009. Filed under Local News.
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