Ghana Vote Praised As Fair, Ruling Party Man Leads

A Dec. 28 run-off will be held if neither candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes. Six other candidates stood.

Foreign observers praised Ghana's elections as broadly fair and transparent on Tuesday, and partial results put the ruling party's presidential candidate ahead but indicated the close race may go to a run-off.

Sunday's polls to elect a new parliament and choose a successor to President John Kufuor, who steps down in January after the maximum two terms, have been flagged as a test for African democracy after flawed polls elsewhere on the continent.

With just over 80 percent of votes counted, Nana Akufo-Addo of Kufuor's ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) led with 49.7 percent, just ahead of opposition leader John Atta Mills on 47.4 percent, unofficial results broadcast by Joy FM radio showed.

A Dec. 28 run-off will be held if neither candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes. Six other candidates stood.

Analysts say the contest is especially keen as the gold- and cocoa-exporting nation, seen by investors as one of Africa's most promising emerging markets, looks forward to greater prosperity when offshore oil comes onstream in late 2010.

Mills' opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) said on Monday it had calculated from results posted at polling stations that its candidate had won in the first round, and denounced what it called an attempt to rob it of victory.

In another statement on Tuesday, the NDC said it was "poised for victory".

The ruling NPP denied trying to cheat and said it, rather than the NDC, would win.

The vote for the 230-seat parliament was neck and neck. Of seats already decided, the NPP had 78 and the NDC 77, indicating the NPP may lose its domination of the National Assembly. It had 128 seats in the outgoing parliament.

"CALM AND ORDERLY"

Foreign election observers noted some procedural and organisational problems in Sunday's polls but generally praised them as reinforcing Ghana's commitment to democracy.

"Polling was conducted in a calm and generally orderly manner ... EU observers assessed the overall environment positively," the European Union observer mission said.

Monitors from the U.S.-based Carter Center, founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, also commended the Ghana vote for showing "high levels of transparency and openness".

"Ghana is becoming a model of democracy in the region and abroad," former Botswana President Ketumile Masire said, reading a statement from the Carter Center observer mission.

There were, however, some incidents of isolated violence.

Around 400 supporters of one parliamentary candidate attacked electoral officers and their escort, seizing two ballot boxes from a polling station in Dambai, in the mainly pro-NDC Volta Region, regional police chief Bernard Dery told Reuters. Ghana's fifth set of elections since embracing multiparty democracy in 1992 has drawn attention as a chance to prove an African state can hold credible ballots, after election-related violence this year in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria.

"The December 7, 2008 elections in Ghana have the potential to redeem the image of democracy and the rule of law in the continent," an electoral observer mission from the Economic Community of West African States said late on Monday.

The group said Ghana should tighten its rules on campaign financing to reduce "the perceived monetisation" of campaigning and make other improvements, but said the vote had been "free, peaceful, transparent and credible".