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Ghana: VP John Mahama sworn in hours After President’s Death
New Ghana President.,John Dramani Mahama. PHOTO/File
President John Atta Mills’ election victory secured Ghana’s reputation as one of the most mature democracies in West Africa, a position further solidified Tuesday when the vice president took over only hours after the 68-year-old president died five months before finishing his first term.
“We are deeply distraught, devastated as a country,” John Mahama said after his swearing-in ceremony, where he raised the golden staff of office above his head.
Ghana state-run television stations GTV and TV3 broke into their regular programming to announce the president’s death Tuesday afternoon. Government officials did not release the cause of his death, which came three days after his 68th birthday.
Rumors had swirled about Atta Mills’ health in recent months after he made several trips to the United States, and opposition newspapers had reported he was not well enough to run for a second term.
Some radio stations even announced that he was dead during one of his recent trips to the States. When Atta Mills returned to Ghana, he jogged at the airport and blasted those who had falsely reported his death.
On the streets of Cape Coast, 128 kilometers (80 miles) from Accra, people held radios to their ears on the street, listening to the funeral hymns playing on FM stations and waiting for more information about the president’s unexpected death.
“His speeches were full of a spirit of love and peace,” said Efua Mensima, 45. “He was soft-spoken. I wept when I heard of his death.”
In a predominantly Ghanaian section of Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, a group of 10 men tried to organize a bus to take them to Ghana for the president’s funeral.
“The people of Ghana were happy with this president and his program for the development of the country,” said Nour Ousmane Aladji, 27, a taxi driver who moved to Abidjan in 2000.
Chris Fomunyoh, the senior director for Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, said that Ghana’s democracy could weather the death of a president.
“Ghanaian democracy has been tested and its institutions function well,” said Fomunyoh. “There’s no reason to think that Ghana and its democracy will not handle this event properly.”
Atta Mills was elected in a 2008 runoff vote that was the closest in the country’s history — and his third presidential bid.
“People are complaining. They’re saying that their standard of living has deteriorated these past eight years,” he told The Associated Press at the time. “So if Ghana is a model of growth, it’s not translating into something people can feel.”
He went on to serve as president as Ghana began grappling with how to deal with its newfound oil wealth from offshore fields discovered in the last five years. The country of about 25 million saw a growth rate of more than 14 percent last year.
Atta Mills also was one of the only leaders in West Africa who didn’t back plans for an intervention force during last year’s near-civil war in Ivory Coast. Because of its shared border, Ghana became the main smuggling route for Ivorian cocoa.
The late president spent much of his career teaching at the University of Ghana. He earned a doctorate from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies before becoming a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Atta Mills also served as vice president under Jerry Rawlings, a coup leader who was later elected president by popular vote and surprised the world by stepping down after the 2000 vote.
Atta Mills defeated the ruling party by the slimmest of margins, marking two successful handovers of power in Ghana, a benchmark used by political scientists to measure a mature democracy.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press