Ghana President set for victory

Ghana’s President John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was heading for victory yesterday in an election that has been described as a close race.

The electoral commission was releasing results on its website, but the most recent available included only 173 of 275 districts. Those results put Mahama at 49.61 per cent and Akufo-Addo at 48.9 per cent.
A run-off election is to be held on December 28 if no candidate receives more than 50 per cent. Eight candidates contested the election.

Ghana, a new oil producer with a booming economy, is seeking to live up to its reputation as a beacon of democracy in West Africa.
Observers from the Commonwealth, West African bloc ECOWAS and local group CODEO have all said the vote held over Friday and Saturday had appeared peaceful and transparent.
Nigeria’s ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo who led the African Union (AU) and the ECOWAS monitoring team said the election was credible.

The opposition however issued a scathing statement alleging fraud.
“Indeed, we have enough concrete evidence to show that the 2012 presidential election was won by our candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo,” the NPP said.
“We have noticed a pattern of fraud, where substantial numbers of votes are either added to the NDC candidate or subtracted from the NPP presidential candidate.”
It demanded an audit of collated vote figures as well as of data from the biometric verification machines used in the election before the results are officially announced.

“We call upon our party members and the general public to ignore the tainted provisional results announced through the mass media,” the NPP said.
A crowd of about 200 NPP supporters sought to march on the electoral commission Sunday afternoon. They remained peaceful as they stood behind security forces who blocked a main road to the commission, shouting “we want justice,” an AFP correspondent reported.