Defiant Ghana opposition vows to challenge vote results

ACCRA

Ghana's main opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo on Tuesday refused to accept presidential election results giving victory to incumbent John Dramani Mahama and vowed to challenge them in court.

Speaking at a rally of several hundred people in the capital, Akufo-Addo urged supporters to remain peaceful, but spoke out strongly against the results after his New Patriotic Party alleged a "pattern of fraud" in the election.

"We are not accepting the results that were declared by the electoral commission," he said. "That is the official position of the New Patriotic Party."

The 68-year-old human rights lawyer and son of a former president also said "we are not going to retreat from the stance we have taken."

"We are going to put ourselves in the hands of the Supreme Court judges," he said. "While we are doing that, I'm asking for calm. I'm asking for peace."

Other speakers at the rally however took a more militant tone, declaring "no justice, no peace" and spoke of a "constitutional coup."

There appeared to be a fight in the back of the crowd at the rally, but details were unclear.

The decision to go to court comes with the country under pressure to maintain its reputation as a stable democracy in turbulent West Africa. Local election observers, citing their own findings, have said they support the results showing Mahama won.

According to the electoral commission, Mahama won the election held over Friday and Saturday with 50.70 percent of the votes cast, compared with Akufo-Addo's 47.74 percent.

Stakes in the election were especially high in the country of 24 million people with a booming economy fuelled in part by a new and expanding oil industry.

Top officials from the opposition party, including Akufo-Addo, met at an Accra hotel earlier Tuesday to decide whether to challenge the results in court, emerging in the afternoon to declare that they would.

Akufo-Addo, who lost 2008 elections by less than one percentage point, said Monday that Ghana's democratic image "shouldn't be a falsehood."

"It shouldn't be that on the surface we have democracy, but underneath we have something else," he said. "We want the democracy of Ghana to be a genuine one."

Mahama received welcomed support from Washington on Monday as the White House urged all Ghanaians to accept the result of their election and congratulated him on his victory.

Observers from the Commonwealth, West African bloc ECOWAS and local group CODEO all said the vote appeared peaceful and transparent.

After the official results were announced, CODEO called them "generally an accurate reflection of how Ghanaians voted in the December 7 polls", based on the group's own findings from its observers deployed throughout the country.

The opposition however had issued a scathing statement even before the official results were announced late Sunday.

"Indeed, we have enough concrete evidence to show that the 2012 presidential election was won by our candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo," it said, alleging a "pattern of fraud."

The 54-year-old Mahama, previously vice president, has only been head of state since July, following the death of his predecessor John Atta Mills.

Elections since the return to civilian rule in 1992 have seen both parties voted out of office, establishing Ghana's democratic credentials in a region that has had its share of rigged polls and coups.

Ghana is also a top exporter of cocoa and gold, with economic growth of 14 percent in 2011. Eight percent growth is expected this year and next.