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High hopes for Ghana ride on presidential run-off
Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:13am EST
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By Kwasi Kpodo
ACCRA (Reuters) - A run-off vote in Ghana on Sunday will decide who will be president of Africa's newest emerging oil producer, a beacon of hope on the continent after a year of setbacks to democracy crowned by a coup in Guinea.
The deciding presidential ballot pits Nana Akufo-Addo, of the previously ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), against the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC)'s John Atta Mills, after neither managed an outright win in the December 7 first round.
Akufo-Addo finished first with just over 49 percent, more than one percentage point ahead of Mills, but he failed to gain the more than 50 percent of votes required to carry the ballot.
The campaign has been spiced with heated rhetoric and the NDC has protested to electoral officials about "irregularities."
But the first round vote earlier this month was praised by international observers as orderly, free and fair, a model for Africa which has seen several electoral debacles this year.
Analysts say the presidential election contest is finely poised and could go either way. Voter turnout, put at nearly 70 percent in the first round, could be decisive.
"The NPP will have a clear win if voter turnout goes up significantly from the first round, but there's a chance for an NDC win because of the voter fatigue that is always associated with run-offs," Kwesi Jonah of the Institute of Democratic Governance think-tank told Reuters in Accra.
Ghana's vote to find a successor to outgoing President John Kufuor, who is stepping down after two terms, is widely seen as salvaging some democratic credibility for the continent, which has seen post-election crises in Kenya and Zimbabwe this year.
There have also been two recent coups, one in Mauritania in August and another on Christmas Eve when army officers seized power in Guinea after President Lansana Conte died.
Ghana's presidential vote comes at a time when the West African country, already the world's No. 2 cocoa grower and Africa's second largest gold producer, is preparing to start producing oil in commercial quantities from late 2010.
This will boost an economy squeezed by food and fuel price increases this year which ordinary Ghanaians have felt in their household budgets in the form of rising inflation.
SPLIT PARLIAMENT
Analysts see possible downside risks in the outcome from Sunday's vote, which follows the NPP losing its majority in parliament in the legislative elections held on December 7.
Two of the national assembly's 230 seats still need to be declared by the electoral commission, which is handling outstanding constituency disputes, and the parliament now appears split -- with the NDC holding 114 seats and the NPP 108.
"Either way, the next president of Ghana -- whether from the NPP or the NDC -- is likely to face a hostile and acrimonious parliament that his party won't be able to easily control," Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, Africa analyst of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, wrote in a briefing note. Continued...
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