President John Atta Mills

The following is a brief introduction of the president-elect.

The 64-year-old candidate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won 50.23 percent of the votes cast in the Dec. 28 run-off, enjoying a slim margin over the 49.77 percent garnered by his mainrival Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Neither of the two won over 50 percent in the first round held on Dec. 7, leading to the run-off.

Mills, Ghana's vice president during 1997-2001, has also contested in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, but lost in both times to the NPP candidate John Agyekum Kufuor, the outgoing president.

Mills graduated from the University of Ghana, and furthered his studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London where he earned a PhD in Law. He was later selected as a Fullbright scholar at the Stanford Law School in the United States.

Between 1971 and 1980, Mills was a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, where he rose through the ranks to Associate Professor of Law in 1992.

From 1986 to 1993, Mills was also the Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and the substantive Commissioner during 1993-1996. He was then selected as the running mate to former President Jerry Rawlings for the 1996 elections, and served as vice president from 1997 to 2001.

The president-elect has more than one dozen publications in the taxation and law fields to his credit.