>So, now the elections are off to a second round, taking place on December 28th and with results probably not until just before next year starts, as Maya predicts.
When the total results were in, the “high turnout” (that I wrote about here) was also adjusted, into something much lower than last time. The Economist also questioned the high turnout from last presidential elections citing a bloated voters registry to cause the extraorinary turnout. They concluded wryly:
This time fewer votes were cast by the under-age, the multiply-registered and the dead.
This first round of elections where the opposition party NDC overtook a number of parliament seats from the ruling NPP, but left NPP on top -if just slightly – in the presidential elections, shows that people in Ghana do consider split ballots. Also, the campaign funds that probably were several times greater for the incumbents, much caused by their strong support by the middle class and Ghanaian Diaspora overseas, does not seem to have had any greater impact.
The elections were deemed free and fair by international observers and from my point of view, everybody has remained very calm, even when the two leading parties only were divided by little over 1%.
Maybe it is too soon to draw big conclusions on the quality of Ghana’s democracy, but it surely looks promising.
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