Kufuor Declared WINNER

... Mills congratulates Kufuor
... Election turnout hits 83%
Accra, Dec. 9, GNA - The Electoral Commission (EC) at 2235 hours on Thursday declared President John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) winner of the Presidential Election held on Tuesday with 52.75 per cent of the votes cast.

Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) obtained 44. 32 per cent of the total votes cast; Dr Edward Mahama of the People's National Convention (PNC) had 1.93 per cent while Mr George Aggudey of Convention People's Party (CPP) got 1 per cent of the votes.

President Kufuor needed to win 50 per cent plus one of the total votes cast to win in accordance with the Constitution of Ghana. The results were from 225 out of the 230 constituencies in the country. In absolute terms President Kufuor obtained 4,463,731 votes while Prof Mills got 3,750,830; Dr Mahama 163,648 and Mr Aggudey had 84,501 of the votes.

Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairman of the EC, announced that 8,615,306 votes were cast while 183,997 ballots representing 2.14 per cent were rejected. The total valid votes were 8,462,710 were cast. The voter turn out was 83.2 per cent. He said the results of five constituencies - Pru in Brong Ahafo Region; Bia in Western Region; Yapei-Kusawgu, Tolon and Zabzugu-Tatale all in the Northern Region - had not been received at the time of the declaration of the results.

Dr Afari-Gyan explained that the total number of registered voters in these constituencies was 220,216 and that if they all voted for the remaining three contestants President Kufuor would still obtain the 50 per cent plus one vote. Prior to announcing the results Dr Afari-Gyan said he had earlier in the day received a letter from Dr Nii Josiah Ayeh, General Secretary of the NDC, requesting that spoilt and rejected ballots should be recounted and also complained about unsigned result forms by Party Agents.

Dr Afari-Gyan said the Commission after considering the matters raised rejected the request, explaining that spoilt ballots were not counted at all and were not added. He quoted from EC Handbook for Polling Agents, which spelt out the procedure for rejecting ballots. He said the Presiding Officer decided the validity of the collated results and not the Party Agents.

High Turnout

Turnout among the roughly 10 million eligible voters was a staggering 83.2 percent in a nation that prides itself on leading the way for a new generation of maturing African democracies.

"The thumb has worked," one online editorial declared after the vote. Posters across Ghana had urged voters to use "the power of the thumb," stamping ink-doused thumbs to ballot papers to peacefully choose their next leader.

Ghana voters held radios to ears throughout the vote count. When the declaration of the winner came, Kufuor spokesman Kwabena Agyepong said he was "invigorated by this decision."

"And he will work hard to bring prosperity to Ghana," the spokesman said.

Kufuor, first elected in 2000, rode high on his popularity for maintaining peace and democratic gains and for nudging along the economy of the world's No. 2 cocoa producer and one of the leading gold producers.

West African election observers said earlier Thursday the vote had been "transparent and in good order."

"The elections were orderly and peacefully conducted, and every member of our delegation would like to congratulate the people of Ghana," Desomond Luke, chairman of the 19-member team from the Economic Community of West African States, told reporters in the capital, Accra.

Kufuor's party, the New Patriotic Party, also was poised to take a majority of the 230 seats in parliament.

Kufuor celebrated his 65th birthday Wednesday amid a flurry of victory predictions.

He first defeated Mills in 2000, in a race that marked the first democratic transfer of power in Ghana, a former British colony that in 1957 became the first holding in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence.

Mills was the chosen candidate of Jerry Rawlings, a charismatic former flight lieutenant who seized power in a 1981 coup, capping more than a decade of rule by military big men who drove Ghana's economy into the ground.

Rawlings allowed, and won, fair elections in 1992 and 1996, beating Kufuor in the latter race.

In a region where coups and political instability still are relatively common, radio DJs, preachers and government officials urged Ghana's 20 million people to take the results of this week's race calmly.