Accra, Dec. 28, GNA - Voting ended officially in Sunday's presidential election runoff contest between Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of New Patriotic (NPP) and Professor John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress NDC).
Polling at some 22,000 polling stations ended at 1700 hours and counting has started. The first results are expected late on Sunday night or early on Monday morning. The Electoral Commission expects the results to be declared within 48 hours.
Election 2008 Presidential Runoff, considered as historic, would lead to the second uninterrupted handover of power by an elected leader to another elected leader in the country's 51-year political history.
It is the fifth successive multi-party elections under the Fourth Republic. Former President Jerry Rawlings, who transformed himself from a military leader into a democratically elected president in 1992 on the ticket of the NDC, served his full two terms. His term of office ended on January 6, 2001.
President John Agyekum Kufuor, who won the presidency on the ticket of the NPP, would be the second Ghanaian elected leader to hand over to another elected leader.
Seven political parties and an independent candidate contested for the single presidential slot but none of them was able to garner the more than 50 per cent of the votes needed to win the first poll held on December 7 2008, hence the runoff.
In the first round, Nana Akufo-Addo obtained 4,159,439 votes, representing 49.13 per cent of the votes while Prof. Mills garnered 4,056,634 votes, representing 47.92 per cent of the votes cast in 229 out of the 230 constituencies. The results of the Akwatia Constituency in the Eastern Region are outstanding.