Congratulations to the people of Ghana who today celebrate the inauguration of their new President Professor John Atta-Mills. Unlike their neighboruing colossus, Nigeria, the Ghanaians were able to carry out their elections without any violence and other squalid activities.
This time last year violence erupted after the Kenyan elections in December 2007 and Zimbabweans are still being strangled by Mugabe. I don’t profess to have any real knowledge of Ghanaian politics [for more on the elections see here and here] and as Ethan Zuckerman writes, all was not perfect in the Ghana during the elections.
It would be wrong to characterize Ghana as calm during this period – people tell me that the situation is quite tense. I’ve been getting texts and phone calls from friends in Accra telling me that the problems are largely “big men saying stupid things” – i.e., politicians on both sides making accusations of voter fraud. (NPP believes there was fraud in the Volta region, the traditional stronghold of the NDC; NDC argues that there was fraud in the Ashanti region, the stronghold of the NPP.)
Nonetheless, Ghana has held a “free, fair and transparent election in which an opposition candidate defeated a candidate of the ruling party” and for this we should all celebrate and hopefully people from elsewhere on the continent will take notice of what is possible.
