Ghana’s President John Kufuor of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is on course to win a second term.
The country’s opposition candidate, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is struggling to emerge from the shadow of former NDC leader Jerry Rawlings ahead of elections on December 7.
Rawlings, nicknamed “Junior Jesus” by his followers, came to power in a 1979 coup and ruled Ghana for two decades. He is flamboyant and colourful, in contrast to Atta Mills’s restrained intellectual style.
But a commission set up by Kufuor to investigate human rights abuses has focused strongly on wrongdoing committed during Rawlings’s era.
Atta Mills, a former law professor, served as Rawlings’s vice-president during his last term in office. Rawlings stood down in 2000, leaving Atta Mills to seek election.
Nonetheless, the former president has continued to be a prime fixture in this year’s campaign, embarking on tours to shore up support for his protégé. But many Ghanaians think he is doing more harm than good to the NDC cause.
“People are fed up with Rawlings. They want someone untainted by his legacy,” said Kwesi Jonah of the country’s Institute of Economic Affairs. University of Ghana academic Kwami Boafo-Arthur said Rawlings’s high profile was making Atta Mills look weak and this would reduce his support among undecided voters.
“People are asking: Can this man really be his own person? There’s a worry that Atta Mills is Rawlings’s puppet and a vote for him is a vote for Rawlings.”
The two other main parties contesting the presidential election, the Convention People’s Party and the Grand Coalition, are widely viewed as bit-players.
Although political analysts say the path looks clear for Kufuor, a 65-year-old Oxford-trained lawyer, they warn that Ghanaians will not give him a flawless scorecard.
A nationwide survey of voter attitudes in August, published by the National Commission for Civic Education, showed Ghanaians wanted their politicians to focus above all on improving education. Their other top priorities were health care, unemployment and agriculture. Still, Ghana’s current reputation as a tolerant and genuine democracy has won Kufuor many plaudits.
Meanwhile, in Namibia the discovery last week of ballot papers dumped beside a road has given fresh impetus to the opposition’s condemnation of last month’s National Assembly and presidential elections. A pile of 22 ballots, some of them half burnt, was found under a bridge opposite a military base in Okahandja, north of the country’s capital, Windhoek.
The votes had all been cast in favour of opposition parties who are now consulting lawyers to have the elections declared invalid.
The opposition parties have also raised suspicion over the high voter turnout and the counting process used in the election.