Ghana Center-Right May Challenge Presidential Election Results

Nana Akufo-Addo is the Ghanaian center-right's leader

From the Associated Press: "It remains unclear if the [center-right party] NPP plans to challenge the results, which gave 50.7 percent of the vote to Mahama. Opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo, who came in second with 47.7 percent, told reporters on Monday that the party is compiling data from polling stations in order to compare it with the published results. He said the party will make a decision on Tuesday on whether or not to contest the results."

Under Ghana's constitution, the NPP has 21 days to challenge the results. The African Union is telling Mr. Akufo-Addo — who lost the 2009 presidential election by less than 1 percent of the vote — to concede, but he declines to do so: "African Union leader Yayi Boni, who is the president of neighboring Benin, made a trip to Akufo-Addo’s residence. The candidate’s personal assistant told reporters that Boni had asked Akufo-Addo to concede defeat. 'Yayi Boni stopped by,' said his secretary, Herbert Krappa, 'to tell him that the entire world is watching Ghana, and asked him just to let it go.' He said that Akufo-Addo said he didn’t want to get in the way of peace, 'but the NPP has discovered very serious flaws and the magnitude of the fraud is not something they can ignore.' Akufo-Addo said, 'The image of Ghana (as a beacon of democracy) shouldn’t be a false one. It shouldn’t be on the surface we have democracy but underneath we have something else.'"