OPPOSITION LEADER WINS GHANA' S ELECTIONS

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By FRANCIS KOKUTSE, Associated Press
ACCRA AND DAKAR

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 U.N. 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 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 to 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, according to the country's Electoral Commission.

"I assure Ghanaians that I will be president for all," Atta Mills declared, mindful of his thin mandate.

He also called on his supporters to be "circumspect and do nothing to provoke anyone."

Opposition supporters thronged the streets 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."

Though buoyed by Ghana's recent discovery of oil, the 64-year-old tax expert who will be inaugurated president Wednesday of the world's No. 2 cocoa producer will have to struggle with the effects of a global economic downturn. The poor in Ghana already complain that wealth is not trickling down and Atta Mills has accused the government of corruption.

The historic ballot marked the third time Atta Mills ran for president — and was so close authorities had to rerun it Friday in one district that had a ballot shortage earlier.

Akufo-Addo conceded defeat and congratulated his rival, and the ruling party ended court filings questioning some districts' voting results to promote national unity.

Pham, the Africa scholar, called the vote "a milestone."

"It's 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," he said.

That the transfers were between opposing governing powers "is an important indicator of the vibrancy of a country's democracy and the maturity of its political institutions," Pham added.

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.

Ensuring economic growth will be his biggest challenge. Ghana's economy has been growing by more than 6 percent a year 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. It said 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 of only $3.80 a day. A tenth of the adult population is unemployed and 40 percent are illiterate.

Atta Mills spent much of his career teaching at the University of Ghana and served as the country's tax chief under Rawlings. He earned a doctorate from London's School of Oriental and African Studies before becoming a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

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Associated Press Writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.