Voter Turnout High in Ghana as Two Lawyers Face Off in Tight Presidential Race

JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 7 -- Ghanaians lined up Sunday to choose a new president to lead one of Africa's most stable democracies as it enters a new era as an oil-producing nation.

Voters turned out in large numbers, lining up before dawn to decide a close race between two lawyers promising greater prosperity for an economically developing nation where many people are still poor and struggling with high food and fuel prices.

"I want more improvement in agriculture so that we can get food to eat," said Dogo Salifu, 46, who cast his ballot at a seaside polling station in Accra, capital of the West African country.

The election was expected to be extremely tight, and some analysts predicted that neither leading candidate would secure the 51 percent vote needed to avoid a runoff. Votes were being counted Sunday night, and final results were not expected for up to three days.

Ghana, a major cocoa and gold producer, has held four democratic elections since 1992 and is widely considered one of Africa's strongest democracies. But after recent disputed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe were followed by bloodshed, the close race prompted international observers to monitor polling stations. Churches and mosques led prayers for a peaceful vote.

"This will be an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we can continue to hold transparent and credible elections," said Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development. "We are also fully aware that the whole world is watching us, and especially Africa is watching us, to see if we can help Africa defy the trend of these tainted elections, some of them leading into violence."

Although there were eight names on the ballot, the election boiled down to a battle between the ruling New Patriotic Party's Nana Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister and attorney general, and John Atta Mills, a former vice president making his third try for the top job as candidate for the National Democratic Congress, the main opposition party.

Ghana's current president, John Kufuor, is set to step down next year after his second and final term. Ghana, a former British colony that was the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence, returned to democracy in 1992 after two decades of coups and military rule.

Akufo-Addo and Atta Mills differ little on policy, and analysts said the vote would largely amount to a referendum on the popularity of the two main parties.

Both parties see a windfall in the discovery last year of oil beneath Ghana's coastal waters. The oil is expected to start pumping by 2010 and to bring in as much as $3 billion a year. The candidates have pledged to use the revenue to boost development.

But Ghanaians are wary, analysts said. In other big African oil-producing countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, little of the bounty has trickled down to the masses.

"Every party is itching to come to power to be the first to use the oil money," said Kwesi Jonah, a political science professor at the University of Ghana. But he added: "Oil will not necessarily be a blessing. . . . That's a big concern on the ground."

On Sunday, that issue was on the mind of Seth Ampadu, a spare-parts dealer who said he cast his first ballot at the dawn of Ghana's independence and was now motivated to vote by a desire to keep the nation out of the hands of "chop-chop" -- or corrupt -- leaders.

"I'm voting for a leader who has the future of the people at heart," said Ampadu, 66, who declined to name his candidate.

Osabutey reported from Accra.