Nana Akufo-Addo won Ghana’s national election, becoming president elect at
the third attempt and cementing the country’s reputation as a standard
bearer of democracy in a region that has been blighted by civil wars and
coups.
Akufo-Addo defeated President John Mahama by 53.8 percent to 44.4 percent,
electoral commissioner Charlotte Osei said late on Friday, sparking scenes
of celebration in the capital Accra.
“I make this solemn pledge to you tonight: I will not let you down. I will
do all in my power to live up to your hopes and expectations,” Akufo-Addo
told a jubilant crowd in front of his residence.
Supporters of his New Patriotic Party (NPP) broke into cheers and dancing
and car horns blared and fireworks erupted across the city, witnesses
said, following an anxious day in which his victory had been broadly
accepted but there were no official results.
Akufo-Addo, 72, served as foreign minister and attorney general in the
previous NPP government that ruled between 2001 and 2009 and twice
previously lost close battles for the presidency.
“It is my duty and my privilege to declare Nana Akufo-Addo as the
president elect of Ghana,” Osei told a news conference in the capital.
The outcome maintains Ghana’s record of fiercely-contested but peaceful
elections, with a government being voted out at the ballot box for the
third time since 2000.
The opposition challenged the 2012 election results, which led to an
eight-month battle in the Supreme Court. It lost, but many observers said
the process strengthened the country’s democracy and confirmed judicial
independence.
The scale of the NPP’s victory on Friday made another legal challenge
unlikely. The party also picked up enough seats to win a parliamentary
majority, independent estimates showed.
The NPP will inherit an economy from Mahama’s National Democratic Congress
that for years was rated one of Africa’s most dynamic but has slowed
sharply since 2014, in part because of prices for the country’s main
exports – gold, cocoa and oil – have fallen.
That made the government vulnerable to opposition accusations it had
mismanaged the nation’s finances and squandered wealth from oil, which
started to flow in 2010 from an offshore field operated by British company
Tullow.
In a bid to kickstart growth, the NPP says it will create jobs, build a
dam in every village and a factory in every district and give each
constituency the equivalent of $1 million per year to pursue development
projects.
At the same time, it also aims to maintain a tight fiscal stance in a
country that is mid-way through an International Monetary Fund program
aimed at restoring balance to an economy facing elevated inflation and
other problems.
A few minutes before Osei’s declaration, Mahama called Akufo-Addo to
concede defeat.
Reuters