Ghana Elections 2012
This website dissimenates information on Ghana's presidential and parliamentary elections. This site provides up-to-date information on candididate schedules, issues and polling. This website is supported in part DePaul University, Graduate School of Communications, and the Graduate School of New Media studies. Professors Bruce Evensen and Laurie Eastman are the advisors. The webmaster is Kofi Amoabin, who will report on the elections in Ghana. Also, this project is presented as a partial fulfillment towards his Master of Arts in Journalism degree. - http://www.depaul.edu.
Presidential and Parliamentary Elections
In 1992 Ghana held its first general election after 20 years of military rule. Ghana's constitution calls presidential term of four years with a two-term limit. Which means a president cannot rule for more than eight years. The NDC won the presidential elections in 1992 and 1996. The NPP won the elections in 2000 and 2004. The NDC came back to in 2008, by winning the presidential elections and majority of the seats in parliament. Ghana is one of the few countries in Africa, where a different political party has won power from and incumbent government and where successive elections have been won by different political parties.
Day of Elections
Polls open at 6 a.m. and Ghanaians report to polling stations to vote. Absentee voting is not allowed, however policemen and election officials vote before the general election.
The elections are monitored by observers across the world. The European Union, Carter Center, Africa Union, ECOWAS, China, Japan and civil society organizations from North America and Asia send observers. Ghana occupies a unique position in Africa as a a country that is aggressively pursuing free and fair elections.
Ghana is a test country for Africa in the push for democratic reforms across the continent that has seen so much poverty, war and misery. In most African countries over 50% population live abject poverty. Yet, the continent is endowed with natural resources. The exploitation of the natural resources has brought wealth to about just 1% of the population in Africa. It is the hope that free and fair elections in Ghana will be a model for other African countries.