Ghana president, longtime opposition leader face off in vote

Earlier this week, the president said democracy “had matured” in his country.

Ghana’s two strong parties regularly hold peaceful and highly competitive elections.

The commission also reported that supporters of Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) had beaten one of its officials.

Despite those hitches, officials and the leading parties are urging Ghanaians to trust and electoral process and commit to peace.

A fall in global commodity prices has hit Ghana’s exports of gold, cocoa and oil hard. The government of the day has lost power twice since 2000.Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister, voted in his home town of Kibi in the Eastern region, surrounded by supporters.”It is my hope and my prayer for victory for myself and my party”, he said, adding he was satisfied with voting so far.

Akufo-Addo has said re-electing Mahama would threaten the nation’s future, accusing the president’s government of mismanaging the economy and unleashing hardship.

“The NPP has done everything to try to bastardize the 2016 general election”.

Akufo-Addo accused the ruling party of fomenting violence as police turn a blind eye, casting doubt on the country’s reputation as beacon of democracy in Africa.

Mahama says the government has improved people’s lives and built fresh infrastructure despite the fiscal crisis, which it says it has largely resolved with the help of continuing International Monetary Fund aid.

Investors are betting that opposition leader Akufo-Addo would not only continue the status quo in economic policy but also be slightly more market-friendly than the incumbent Mahama.

Citi FM gave Akufo-Addo 54.8% based on 190 constituencies.

To ensure the vote is free and fair, thousands of domestic and foreign election observers have been deployed at the almost 29,000 polling stations across the country. Ivor Greenstreet from the Convention People’s Party is the first physically-challenged candidate to contest the presidential election. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has done just that with his parliamentary candidates. He says the electoral commission postponed voting in one western Ghanaian district (Jaman North) until Thursday, due to an unspecified security threat.

Election observers have called on the commission to publish the results faster in order to lay to rest suspicions that the vote may be rigged. She said technical problems had delayed other results.

“We want to assure you that we can not change the results in any way”.

“The inauguration of Mahama’s projects have attracted the swing voters”, said pollster Ben Ephson, who has predicted Mahama will win 52 percent of the votes, mainly from working class constituencies.