Ghana's Incumbent Leader Wins Election
By DREW HINSHAW
ACCRA, Ghana—Voters in one of Africa's fastest-growing economies elected the presidential incumbent from their impoverished north, in a democratic exercise that underscored widening inequality between West Africa's prospering coastal cities and its struggling interior.
Associated Press
Supporters of President John Dramani Mahama celebrate in the streets after he was declared the winner of Ghana's presidential election, in Accra, Ghana, on Dec. 9.
Mr. Mahama's victory came even as the opposition party said thousands of votes had been misreported in the president's favor. Wrangling over results and suspect vote tallies is common here—Mr. Akufo-Addo's party also protested vote fraud when he lost the last, 2008 election, held when his party was in power.
Yet a thriving news radio industry has proved to be a potent referee: In both elections, key private media houses widely viewed as independent endorsed final results, after dispatching journalists to report numbers from virtually all of Ghana's results tallying centers, and many of its polling centers where ballots are counted by hand in plain view of agents from both parties.
Decked in an African print shirt, Ghana's Electoral Commission Chaiman Kwadwo Afari-Gyan announced the results to a country that had spent nearly 12 hours listening to back-and-forth accusations batted by party representatives on talk radio shows. "The day has been long, and I know most of us are tired," Mr. Afari-Gyan said.
Outside the building, armored personnel carriers circled around a few dozen of opposition demonstrators. But the remainder of the city appeared calm.
"Everything cool, no problems," said Ibrahim Musah, a motorcycle taximan and opposition supporter. "Honestly, I can't complain."
Mr. Mahama's win makes him the first elected president of Ghana's generally-poor northern region since 1980, when President Hilla Limann led the country for less than a year between two military coups. Votes from Mr. Mahama's homeland tipped the tight race, analyst said, and spoke to how deeply residents there feel the rising inequality between their hinterland and West Africa's coastal south.
"They turned out to vote," said Ben Ephson, owner of the Daily Dispatch, a newspaper in Accra, the capital. "It's more of a regionalism than ethnicity. The thing is, it's been some time that the north had a president."
Similar tension is unfolding elsewhere in West Africa, creating political, economic and security challenges for regional leaders.
Port cities such as Dakar in Senegal or Lagos in Nigeria are enjoying big investment while opportunities remain scarce for the mostly Muslim people of West Africa's desiccated hinterland. That's spurred violent conflicts across West Africa, particularly a guerrilla struggle between Islamist gunmen and soldiers throughout Nigeria's north.
In Mali, Islamist militants now control the northern two-thirds of that country, whose south had been experiencing a gold mining boom. In next door Niger, government in October approved a $2.5 billion development plan to quell dissatisfaction in its own hinterland, scene of previous revolts.
In Ivory Coast last year, fighters from the dry north swept across the rich cocoa fields of the south, to depose President Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to vacate his presidential bunker in Abidjan after the United Nations and others called the election for his opponent, a northerner, Alassane Ouattara.
Ghana has avoided armed conflict, but suffers the same, centuries-old gap between north and south. The peanut-farming savannah of Ghana's north was a source for slave raids during the 400-year-long slave trade and a source of conscripted labor for cocoa plantations in the south during British colonialism.
Ghana's ambitious founding President Kwame Nkrumah, during his nine year effort to unite Africa into a single nation, built state-owned enterprises across the north that ended up struggling. Today, even as Ghana outpaces the world's fastest-growing economies, many northerners leave to booming Accra to mine trash for scrap metals—or to help shoppers carry their goods through city markets.
In Accra, migrants from the north of Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Ivory Coast and elsewhere -- totaling over 150,000 people by government estimates—pack the roughly 3 square mile neighborhood where Ernest Amami and two friends spend their afternoon on a bench, in front of his mother's house. On Friday, the three young men from Ghana's hinterland voted for Mr. Mahama.
"He himself is from the north, so why not?" Mr. Amami said, as throngs of children ran and screamed and blew vuvuzelas in a victory celebration down the narrow dirt passageways they share with sheep. Asked if, given a job, they would return to the quieter towns of their homeland, Mr. Amami responded an emphatic Yes. "More than 10 times," he said.
A version of this article appeared December 10, 2012, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Ghana's Incumbent Leader Wins Election.
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