With 56.55% of the vote, former President and leading opposition figure John Dramani Mahama was proclaimed the winner of Saturday’s presidential election by Ghana’s electoral commission on Monday, citing preliminary figures.
To reduce tensions, Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the ruling party and Mahama’s principal opponent, already admitted loss in Sunday’s parliamentary and presidential elections.
Continuing, 267 of the 276 constituencies in the West African nation had their votes tabulated, according to the election commission. There were 60.9% of voters. After being president of Ghana from 2012 to 2016, Mahama, 66, is returning.
Bawumia, he said, was a continuation of the policies that caused Ghana to experience its worst economic crisis in a generation.
Following the announcement of the results, he told hundreds of ecstatic fans at his campaign grounds: “This mandate serves as a constant reminder of what fate awaits us if we fail to reach the aspirations of our people and govern with arrogance.”
“The victory shows that the Ghanaian people have little tolerance for bad governance,” he added.
Before the election, Mahama stated in an interview accessed by BrandSpur digital news that he would try to renegotiate the terms of a $3 billion bailout obtained last year from the International Monetary Fund to restructure the nation’s debt. In addition, he has pledged to implement tax changes, remove corporate rules, implement a 24-hour, three-shift work schedule, and invest $10 billion in infrastructure modernization.
Ghana, which produces cocoa, gold, and oil, is experiencing a spiraling economic and cost-of-living crisis that has hurt Akufo-Addo’s government’s popularity and accelerated calls for a leadership transition.
