Ghana will hold a presidential run-off on Dec. 28 as no candidate received more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round on Sunday, the Ghanaian Electoral Commission said Wednesday.
Kwadwo Afari Gyan, chairman of the Ghanian Electioral Commission, told a press briefing that both the top two hopefuls, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party and John Evans Atta Mills of the main opposition party National Democratic Congress, failed to garner the votes needed to win outright, according to news reaching here.
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo won 49.13 percent of the counted votes, followed by his major rival John Evans Atta Mills who received 47.92 percent of the ballots, the electoral commission announced.
The result is based on the tallying of the votes of 229 of the total 230 constituencies. The electoral commission also said the turnout of the vote stood at 69.52 percent.
The commission said the result of the remaining constituency would not give neither of the two leading candidates enough votes to avoid a run-off.
Ghanaians went to polls on Sunday to elect a new president and the National Assembly.
The electoral commission website said a large group of foreign observers, including a team of 200 from the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS), were in Ghana to monitor the elections.
Eight candidates registered for the first round presidential race, and various opinion polls had signaled Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and John Evans Atta Mills as the top two hopefuls.
The other six candidates were Edward Nasigrie Mahama of People's National Convention (PNC), Emmanuel Ansah Antwi of Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Thomas Ward-Brew of Democratic People's Party (DPP), Paa Kwesi Nduom of Convention People's Party(CPP), Kwamena Adjei of Reformed Patriotic Democrats (RPD) and independent candidate Kwesi Amoafo-Yeboah.
For the parliamentary election, a total of 1,060 candidates filed nominations to contest for seats in the 230-seat legislature. Of the candidates, 957 are males and 103 females.
Ghana borders Cote d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south. The capital is Accra.
With a territory of 238,537 square km, Ghana is a divided into10 regions, subdivided into a total of 138 counties. A 2005 estimate put the nation's population at some 22 million.
Once a British colony, Ghana was the first African nation to achieve independence from Britain in 1957 and was created as a parliamentary democracy followed by alternating military and civilian governments.
In January 1993, military government gave way to the Fourth Republic after presidential and parliamentary elections in late 1992.
Ghana's constitution divides powers among a president, parliament, cabinet, Council of State, and an independent judiciary. The government is elected by universal suffrage.
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