Neither the ruling party nor the opposition secured enough votes to win the presidential election outright, forcing a runoff in one of Africa's few stable democracies, according to results released Wednesday.
The neck-and-neck race has become a referendum on Ghana's stunning economic growth, which saw the country's foreign investment grow 20-fold and exports more than double since the ruling party took office eight years ago.
Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party, or NPP, received 49.1 percent of the vote _ just 1 percentage point shy of what he needed to win the election in the first round.
Opposition candidate John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress, or NDC, campaigned on a platform of change, arguing that the country's growth has not been felt in people's wallets. He received 47.9 percent of the 8.6 million votes cast, according to returns from all but one of the country's 230 precincts.
A runoff will be held on Dec. 28, said Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, chairman of the Electoral Commission.
Opposition leaders had told their supporters several times since Sunday's vote that they had won the race outright, holding press conferences in violation of election protocol. Young men tore down the posters of the opposition candidate and carried them triumphantly through the streets.
"We are suffering," screamed 27-year-old Charles Banngrman over the din of his party colleagues after one premature celebration. "We are working in this country and we are paid, but by the time we pay our electricity and our water, there's nothing," he said to explain why he voted for the NDC.
NDC supporters compare the West African country's ruling party to America's Republican Party, saying both favored large corporations at the expense of the common man. Like the GOP, the symbol of Ghana's ruling party is the elephant, giving rise to a running stream of jokes.
"In America, the big elephant was sent to the bush. Now it's time for the junior elephant to also be sent to the bush!" another NDC supporter screamed.
Akufo-Addo concedes that growth has not been felt at the level of ordinary people.
"Our position is no different from that of growing economies around the world. When the growth starts, there is a period of gestation before its impact is felt," he told The Associated Press as he waited for the final results. "There's nothing unique about this. We are seeing the same thing in India, in China."
Despite tensions between supporters of the two main parties and isolated cases of violence at polling stations in the country's interior, observers with the U.S.-based Carter Center, founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said the vote was an example.
Monitors with the European Union and ECOWAS, a regional body representing 15 African states, also called the election fair and transparent.
Ghanaians take seriously their status as a role model for the continent and many voters said that regardless who wins the election, the ultimate winner is Ghana which will have pulled off its fifth consecutive democratic vote.
If the runoff goes smoothly, it also will mark the country's second transfer of power from one democratically elected leader to another, considered a litmus test of a mature democracy.
Like its neighbors, Ghana has a history of repression and one-party rule. But in the 1990s, ex-coup leader Jerry Rawlings of the NDC organized elections, winning the 1992 and 1996 votes. When his party lost in 2000, he did what no one expected by stepping down, ushering in two terms of the NPP government.
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Associated Press Writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report.
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