Opposition Leader wins Presidency in Ghana

GHANA: Opposition leader John Atta Mills was declared Ghana’s next President Saturday in a peaceful ballot that secured the West African nation’s place as a beacon of democracy on a volatile continent.

The country is one of the few in Africa to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another, proof that Ghana’s democracy has truly matured after an era of coups and dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

But tensions still ran high in what became the closest vote in Ghana’s history, and some feared violence could erupt as it did earlier this year in Kenya - an East African nation that also was a model of stability until a similarly tight 2007 ballot unleashed weeks of tribal bloodshed.

Ghana’s ruling party candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had threatened to reject the results, but withdrew his court challenges and conceded peacefully. President John Kufuor appealed on both sides to accept the outcome and his call appeared aimed at his own governing party.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan - who helped broker peace in Kenya last year - also flew home New Year’s Day and worked behind the scenes to calm tensions, according to Peter Pham, an Africa expert at James Madison University in Virginia.

Though democracy has spread in Africa over the last decade, some countries - like Zimbabwe - are ruled by strongmen whose elections have been shams. In Mauritania in August, the military toppled the first democratically elected president in decades. And in Guinea, the army seized power after the country’s longtime dictator died a few weeks ago.

After Ghana’s December 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 to 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, according to the country’s Electoral Commission.

Accra, Sunday, AP