Opposition Candidate Wins Ghana Presidency

The nation’s opposition standard-bearer, John Kufuor, won a historic presidential election as the West African nation voted for change after two decades of rule by Jerry J. Rawlings.

With more than 90% of votes tallied from Thursday’s runoff election, officials said Kufuor had 57%, compared with 43% for Vice President John Atta Mills, a Rawlings protege.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, himself a Ghanaian, paid tribute to the peaceful and transparent way that the election was conducted.

“With these elections, Ghana has demonstrated that democracy and its institutions continue to take root in Africa. The international community should rejoice at this orderly and democratic transfer of power,” he said in a statement.

Rawlings, a fighter pilot and radical firebrand who staged two coups before embracing political and economic reforms, has said he will step down Jan. 7, respecting a two-term constitutional limit.

He has led Ghana for 19 years and has dominated the West African nation since first seizing power in 1979.

Rawlings chose Mills, a 56-year-old tax expert, as his running mate before he went on to defeat Kufuor and win a final four-year term in the last presidential election in 1996.

Kufuor, 62, won plaudits at home and abroad in 1996 when he graciously accepted defeat.

His victory consigns Rawlings’ ruling National Democratic Congress to the opposition benches and gives Ghana its first real change of power through the ballot box.

Voters, particularly the young, were hungry for change. Although Kufuor preaches the same free market economics as the current administration, the Rawlings government failed to kick-start a flagging economy.

Kufuor accused Rawlings on Thursday of intimidation tactics and other irregularities to keep the NDC in power.