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The Inability of Nigeria to conduct a successful re-run election in ten local government in one State - Ekiti, stands in sharp contrast to the presidential runoff election in Ghana. This story was reported in the Economist of January 8, 2009. Read on:
IN THE end, the presidential run-off proved to be every bit as tight as the first round of voting on December 7th. On that occasion, the
candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, triumphed by a very small margin over his main rival, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC)—but not by enough votes to avoid a run-off. At the second time of asking, however, on December 28th, the result was reversed—by such a tiny number of votes that the electoral commission had to rerun the vote in one district just to make sure. Only on January 2nd was Mr Mills officially declared the winner; he was sworn in as president five days later. He got nearly 50.2% of the vote, compared with 49.8% for Mr Akufo-Addo. It was the smallest margin of victory in Africa’s electoral history.
Just as important as the result was the conduct of the poll—and the readiness of the loser to accept defeat with grace. After fiascos in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe in the past couple of years, everyone in Africa (and abroad) was hoping that Ghana would start to redeem the continent’s tarnished democratic credentials with a fair poll. The power-sharing agreement that was meant to resolve last year’s electoral stand-off in Kenya seems increasingly shaky; the one in Zimbabwe was never implemented. Africa needed a decent election in one of its leading countries—and a loser who would concede defeat.
There were a few wobbles on the way, but in the end Ghana did not disappoint. The campaign was hard-fought and often bitter in tone. There were several reports of intimidation and attacks at polling stations during the run-off on December 28th, more so than in the first round of voting. With the result so close, it was inevitable that tempers should flare a bit; police had to control a raucous crowd outside the electoral commission on December 30th with water canon. But in the end both parties’ appeals for calm were respected and, crucially, Mr Akufo-Addo quickly conceded defeat after the final result was declared. The much-respected outgoing president, John Kufuor, who belongs to Mr Akufo-Addo’s party, accepted the defeat too.
There may yet be some legal wrangling from glum NPP people, but all foreign and domestic observers seemed happy with the election, so the result should stand. Furthermore, after all the harsh rhetoric, Mr Mills managed to sound as conciliatory as possible in his acceptance speech. Indeed, he had little choice. Such a narrow victory hardly gives him a ringing mandate to govern, let alone force through radical changes. And though his party increased its number of seats in Parliament in the election on December 7th to become the single biggest party, the NDC still lacks an overall majority. That will make it easy for opposition parties, led by the NPP, to frustrate the government’s legislative ambitions if they unite on specific issues.
Ghana has been one of Africa’s successes in recent years. Since the return to democratic government in 1992 after decades of military rule, human rights and individual freedoms have been strengthened and the economy has been growing at a perky average of 6% a year. But some parts of the country remain wretchedly poor, particularly in the north. That is partly why the centre-left NDC won its victory.
Mr Mills, a former academic who was vice-president in the late 1990s, is a moderate with little apparent inclination to change the broadly free-market policies of Mr Kufuor’s governments over the past eight years. But he will hear calls from the left wing of his own party to do so. They will be amplified by the populist and charismatic former president, Jerry Rawlings. He did much in the campaign to rally the party’s rank and file, so he and his supporters will expect the government to spend more on their people through social projects as a reward. Yet opening the spending taps would widen the current-account deficit and increase inflation, which is already rising. A contest between Messrs Mills and Rawlings over the new government’s direction may be as intense as the battle Mr Mills has just won for the presidency.
Oil, however, may help the new man. Its discovery offshore two years ago could provide the new government with revenues of as much as $3 billion a year as early as 2010, half as much again as it gets at the moment. But oil has corrupted and polluted Nigeria, just down the coast. Having avoided Kenya’s and Zimbabwe’s electoral failures, everybody will now be watching to see whether Ghana can avoid Nigeria’s hydrocarbon mistakes.
