ACCRA, Ghana — Opposition leader John Atta Mills was declared Ghana’s next president Saturday in a peaceful ballot that secured the West African nation’s place as a beacon of democracy on a volatile continent.
The country is one of the few in Africa to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another, proof that Ghana’s democracy has truly matured after an era of coups and dictatorship in the 1970s and ’80s.
Tensions still ran high in what became the closest vote in Ghana’s history, and some feared violence could erupt as it did this year in Kenya — an East African nation that also was a model of stability until a similarly tight 2007 ballot unleashed weeks of tribal bloodshed.
Ghana’s ruling-party candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had threatened to reject the results but withdrew his court challenges and conceded peacefully. President John Kufuor appealed on both sides to accept the outcome, and his call appeared aimed at his own governing party.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who helped broker peace in Kenya last year, also flew home New Year’s Day and worked behind the scenes to calm tensions, said Peter Pham, an Africa expert at James Madison University in Virginia.
After Ghana’s Dec. 7 election proved indecisive, Atta Mills won a second-round ballot cast Saturday by capturing a razor-thin victory with 50.23 percent of the vote to 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, according to the country’s Electoral Commission.
“I assure Ghanaians that I will be president for all,” Atta Mills declared, mindful of his thin mandate.
He also called on his supporters to be “circumspect and do nothing to provoke anyone.”
Opposition supporters thronged the streets and jubilant drivers honked horns across the capital, Accra.
Though buoyed by Ghana’s recent discovery of oil, the 64-year-old tax expert who will be inaugurated president Wednesday of the world’s No. 2 cocoa producer will have to struggle with the effects of a global economic downturn.
The poor in Ghana already complain that wealth is not trickling down, and Atta Mills has accused the government of corruption.
