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Ghana election: Mahama Re-elected President
“We won, they are sore losers. They wanted (the electoral commission) to postpone announcement of the results and (the chairman) said there is no reason to postpone. There was no foundation for their allegations,” said Mahama’s presidential adviser, Tony Aidoo. He added that the opposition’s allegation of vote rigging “was a plan to create mayhem, and mayhem will come. … They had such high expectations of coming back to power.”
Despite the allegations, international observers endorsed the elections, calling the vote credible despite the delays caused by the failure of the voter identification machines to work in numerous precincts. The election was also plagued by delays due to the late arrival of voting materials, which resulted in some voters spending 12 or more hours in line.
“There were hiccups but not such that would grossly undermine the result of the election,” said former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who led the delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the bloc representing nations in West Africa.
Ahmed Issak Hassan, head of an observer mission from the South Africa-based Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, said that the election is a test not just for Ghana, but for the continent, which is trying to emerge from a checkered past of coups and civil wars.
“All of Africa was looking at Ghana to make sure that they live up to their reputation and their name of being a mature democracy,” he said.
Like most of its neighbors Ghana, a nation of 25 million, was once a troubled nation that suffered five coups and decades of stagnation, before turning a corner in the 1990s. It is now a pacesetter for the continent’s efforts to become democratic.
The incumbent Mahama, a former vice president, was catapulted into office in July after the unexpected death of President John Atta Mills, an ascension that was itself praised as a democratic example, because the constitutional order of succession was swiftly applied by the government and unanimously accepted by the population. Before becoming vice president in 2009, the 54-year-old Mahama served as a government minister and a member of parliament.
