Ghana set for presidential run-off

11 Dec 2008, 6:55 am   -   Source: AAP
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Ghana faces a presidential run-off after the ruling party candidate came out on top in the first round but failed to knock out his main challenger, polls show.

Ghana faces a presidential run-off election after the ruling party's candidate came out on top in the first round but failed to knock his main challenger out of the contest, poll results showed on Wednesday.

Nana Akufo-Addo from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) won 49.13 per cent of the vote, ahead of John Atta-Mills of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) with 47.92 per cent, the electoral commission said.

With no candidate achieving the 50 per cent plus one vote needed to win outright, a second round poll will take place on December 28 between the two front-runners.

Turnout in Sunday's election was 69.52 per cent, the electoral commission chief Kwado Afari Gyan said.

He said the results announced were based on 229 out of the country's 230 constituencies. Ballot boxes in the 230th constituency had been tampered with, he added, without giving further details.

Ghana voted on Sunday to pick a new president and a legislature, as President John Kufuor completes his second four-year term, the maximum allowed in this west African nation praised as a beacon of stable democracy in modern-day Africa.

The vote marks the second time a democratically-elected leader in Ghana hands over power to another.

"It's not for nothing that we were the first country to achieve independence south of the Sahara," Mustapha Hamid, one of Akufo-Addo's spokesmen said, commenting on the conduct of the elections.

"We are very excited because we won," he added.

Security was tight around the election commission headquarters, with an armoured personnel carrier and large numbers of police and military in attendance.

The NDC, whose candidate Mills is making his third bid for the presidency, has accused the ruling NPP of trying to rig the election with the help of the country's security forces.

Both the NPP and the military denied the allegations.

Despite opposition claims of vote rigging, independent local and international observers called Sunday's vote open and credible.

The elections "have, so far, been conducted in an open, transparent and competitive environment," the team of observers from the European Union said on Tuesday.

The head of British Commonwealth observers, Valerie Amos, said the "intensely contested" elections were conducted in a "peaceful and orderly way."

The Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) called the poll "excellent."

Observers have said Ghana could provide a shining example to the rest of Africa after the crises that followed recent elections in Zimbabwe and Kenya.

The former British colony was plagued by coups until the return to multi-party democracy in 1992.

Once economically stagnant, Ghana has enjoyed steady growth in recent years and the next president will be able to tap into oil revenues when the country starts in 2010 pumping crude offshore near the port of Takoradi.

Trailing a very distant third in the presidential vote is businessman Papa Kwesi Nduom of the Convention People's Party (CPP) with 1.3 per cent of the ballot.

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