Third time lucky Kufuor attains goal

After three attempts, Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor, flag bearer of Ghana's opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has achieved his life ambition of being the number one citizen of Ghana. He has actually been declared winner of the elections by the electoral commissioner. With the result of only one constituency to be declared, Mr. Kufuor has taken an unbeatable lead of 56.73 per cent of the votes in Thursday's presidential run-off.

Vice President John Atta Mills, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate trails with 43.27 per cent. Thursday's contest was a straight fight between the two candidates who emerged the highest in the first round from a field of seven on December 7. At that point Mr Kufuor polled 48.17 per cent of the votes while Prof. Mills polled 44.54 per cent.

And Mr Kufuor, who turned 63 on December 8, must be in a jubilant mood. In 1992, he began his march to the Castle, but he stumbled at the first hurdle. He lost to Professor Albert Adu Boahen as the party's flag bearer for the 1992 election. In 1996, Mr Kufuor made another move and sailed through the first hurdle, but was defeated by President Jerry John Rawlings during the elections. In 2000, however, mother luck has smiled on him and he has virtually achieved his ambition. Mr Kufuor, whose unexpectedly strong showing in the first round on December 7 put him in on pole position for the second round, is streets ahead of Prof. Mills. This will be the first time that the NPP is to taste power after its predecessor, the Progress Party (PP) won the elections of 1969. The PP under Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia was ousted by a military coup led by General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong on January 13, 1972 after being in power for only 27 months.

Results from Thursday's voting followed a general trend with Mr Kufuor gaining more votes even in places where he lost and widened the gap in those where he won. Professor Mills on the other hand lost votes even in most of the places where he won apart from the Volta region. Mr Kufuor has profited from an alliance with the five losing candidates in the first round.

Total number of valid votes was 6,104,525 while rejected votes were 73,683. Total number of votes cast was 6,178,208.

Mr Albert Kofi Arhin, Director of Elections of the EC, told the GNA that the international community would appreciate the conduct of the election despite the isolated cases of intimidation and violence recorded in the early hours of the election. He said he appreciated the role of the media, which has helped to enhance the effectiveness of the electoral process. He said the media were on hand to inform the EC of shortages of electoral material and malpractice at polling stations, which helped the monitoring of the vote.

In New York, Reuters reports that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, himself a Ghanaian, paid tribute to the peaceful and transparent way that the election was conducted. "With these elections, Ghana has demonstrated that democracy and its institutions continue to take root in Africa. The international community should rejoice at this orderly and democratic transfer of power," he said in a statement.

Rawlings, a fighter pilot and radical firebrand who staged two coups before embracing political and economic reform, steps down on January 7, respecting a two-term constitutional limit on the number of mandates a president can serve. He has led Ghana for 19 years and has dominated the West African nation since first seizing power in 1979. Rawlings chose Mills, a 56-year-old tax expert, as his running mate before he went on to defeat Kufuor and win a final four-year term in the last presidential election in 1996.

"We recognise that the trends are not in our favour," a personal assistant to Mills, Willie Ansah, told Reuters earlier, adding that Mills was keeping "a stiff upper lip" and would accept the result whichever way it went.