|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Ghana's president wins four more years in office
Ghana's President John Kufuor won a second and final four-year mandate in the world's number two cocoa grower on Thursday after taking more than half the votes in the first round of a presidential poll.
Ghanaians turned out in droves for Tuesday's elections, which were expected to reward Kufuor, 66, for keeping the former British colony and its gold-producing economy on an even keel, even though many of its 20 million citizens live in poverty.
"I hereby declare candidate Kufuor winner of the presidential election," he told reporters late on Thursday night at the commission headquarters in the capital Accra.
Afari-Djan said Kufuor had already won 52.75 percent of the 8.4 million ballots cast by 10.35 million registered voters, defeating his main rival John Atta Mills on 44.32 percent.
Independence leader Kwame Nkrumah was a founding father of pan-Africanism and pioneer of African socialism. He was thrown out in a 1966 military coup, the first of a string of uprisings.
But Tuesday's election was the fourth since multiparty democracy was introduced in 1992 and it has bolstered Ghana's reputation across Africa as a beacon of democratic stability in an often chaotic and violent region.
Under Kufuor's leadership, Ghana's inflation rate has dropped to 12.5 percent from 40.5 percent, bank lending rates have more than halved, foreign exchange reserves strengthened and a slide in the currency, the cedi, has slowed.
Kufuor, a tall, Oxford-educated lawyer, know as the "gentle giant," needed to win more than 50 percent to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election when he faced Mills in a run-off.
Kufuor's supporters spilled onto the streets of the capital near his house on Thursday night, waving blue, white and red New Patriotic Party flags, blowing whistles and honking horns.
Deep-voiced and affable, he is a Christian, and comes from the once dominant Ashanti tribe in the gold-and cocoa-producing economic heartland. He was also chairman of one of Africa's best known soccer clubs, Asante Kotoko, from 1988 to 1991.
But his press secretary, Kwabena Agyepong, said the NPP had hoped for a bigger winning margin and the result showed there was still plenty of work to be done in the second term.
"The president's priority is to deepen his economic policies to ensure that ordinary people can feel the impact," he said.
The New Democratic Congress party of Mills had earlier lodged a series of complaints with the electoral commission, saying the number of spoiled ballots seemed high and that they should be recounted before any results were declared.
The electoral commission rejected the complaints saying even if the spoiled ballots, the 220,000 votes remaining to be counted and all the votes cast for the other two candidates were given to Mills, Kufuor would still have more than 50 percent.
Voters in Africa's number two gold producer were also choosing from 900 candidates for 230 seats in parliament. The results were due later this week. |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![Kwadjo Afari Djan chairman Ghana electoral commission announces the election final result in Accra, Ghana, early Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004. Ghana Electoral Commission formally declared President John Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party NPP the winner of the election. [AP]](xin_551201101133412160809.jpg)
