Ghanaians are preparing to vote Thursday in landmark elections that will bring an end to 19 years under Jerry Rawlings, the revolutionary who eight years ago was elected president in free polls.
If as expected the presidential showdown between Rawlings' protege John Atta Mills and opposition leader John Kufuor brings about an orderly transfer of power, the event will be a first in African history.
No former military ruler on the continent who has legitimized his power through elections has willingly stepped aside at the expiration of a democratic mandate.
Rawlings, only 53, is prepared to do just that, although speculation abounds that as chairman for life of his National Democratic Congress (NDC) he will continue to call the shots if Atta Mills, the incumbent vice president, wins on Thursday.
Atta Mills faces a stiff challenge from Kufuor, who took 49 percent to his 45 percent in a first-round vote on December 7, and enjoys the support of at least three of the five also-rans.
Kufuor, who lost to Rawlings by just 488,000 votes in 1996, this time faces an opponent with far less charisma, and sees this election as the first real chance for a true victory.
Although his New Patriotic Party (NPP) contested the last two elections, it boycotted the parliamentary vote in 1992 and disputed the result of the 1996 election that won Rawlings his second and final term in office.
The December 7 polls, which saw the NPP storm ahead of the NDC in parliament, were closely monitored and widely considered free and fair.
If January 7, inauguration day, brings a peaceful transfer of power, it will be the first in the west African country's 43 years of independence from Britain.
It will be the end of the Rawlings era, launched by the young flight lieutenant with the first of two military coups in 1979.
Rawlings allowed a civilian president to govern for two years before seizing power definitively in 1981, ruling with an iron hand until he restored multi-party democracy in 1992.
His successor will face a deepening economic crisis marked by high unemployment, spiralling inflation and a dangerously weakening currency.
External events have exacerbated things this year, notably sharp drops in world prices for Ghana's top two foreign exchange earners, gold and cocoa, and a more than doubling of the price of oil.
A rapidly weakening cedi -- which traded at 2,500 to the dollar last year and now stands at 6,500 -- and the surge in oil prices are fanning inflation, which has reached 37 percent this year.
As a result, the purchasing power of the average Ghanaian, living on barely more than a dollar a day, has decreased dramatically.
Ghana has also suffered a slackening of aid money this year, much of it suspended pending an evaluation of the fairness of the elections, and of the new government's commitment to economic liberalization called for by the International Monetary Fund.
With the economy in its present state and the time needed for a new government to set up shop, analyst Emmanuel Aning of the Institute of Economic Affairs said: "I don't think Ghana will be in any way an African success story" in the near future.
As for politics, successful elections "will be the first major step towards consolidating the democratic process" in Ghana, Aning said.
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