ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghanaians wrapped up campaigning for Thursday's run-off election to find a successor to charismatic President Jerry Rawlings, who is standing down after dominating the West African nation for over two decades.
The opposition flag carrier, lawyer and businessman John Kufuor, leader in the first round, spent Tuesday courting voters in Rawlings' stronghold and home region of Volta.
After a Christmas holiday weekend dominated by campaign jingles set to the familiar tunes of Christmas carols, Wednesday will be a rest day with no campaigning allowed by law.
``We don't want to give the people of the Volta Region the impression that we've given up on them,'' Kufuor campaign manager Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey told Reuters.
Kufuor, a member of the once dominant and traditionally wealthier Ashanti tribe, and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) have been telling voters in the poorer eastern region that it is time to end its traditional isolation.
Kufuor won 48.35 percent of votes in the December 7 first round compared to 44.85 percent for Vice-President John Atta Mills, Rawlings's anointed successor and the candidate of his governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The other five presidential hopefuls, who together won 6.8 percent of votes in the first round, have all rallied to Kufuor.
Kufuor, at 62, and Mills, at 56, are both older than Rawlings, who is still only 53 but is respecting a constitutional ban on his running for a third elected four-year term.
End Of The Rawlings Era
The first round passed off comparatively peacefully, apart from bloody clashes in one northern constituency.
But with both sides targeting specific ethnic groups during the latest campaigning and the stakes much higher in the run-off, religious groups have urged all sides to stay calm on Thursday.
Whatever happens, Thursday's poll will mark the end of the Rawlings era, if not necessarily his influence.
Rawlings, a one-time radical firebrand, twice seized power through the barrel of a gun before embracing political and economic reforms.
He formally steps down on January 7 but remains life president of the NDC, the party which he founded and which is sponsoring Mills.
In a December 7 parliamentary election, however, the opposition NPP broke the NDC's stranglehold on parliament, falling short of an outright majority but winning 99 of the 200 seats in the new assembly.
Polling starts at 2 a.m. EST on Thursday and ends at noon EST. First trends and results are likely overnight. Electoral officials predict the final result within 72 hours.
Both Kufuor and Mills, like Rawlings, are committed to donor-supported liberalising economic reforms but whoever wins will have to revive an ailing economy in order to fulfil their election promises.
Inflation hovers between 20 and 30 percent, world prices for the former British colony's main exports gold and cocoa are in the doldrums and its cedi currency has lost about half its value against the dollar since the start of the year.
