International electoral observers are expected to give the thumbs-up to Ghana's landmark election, thus freeing up crucial aid money to the West African country, officials said Monday.
"Our general impressions are that they were free, fair and transparent elections," a western diplomat said ahead of a meeting at which the 200 international observers who watched the poll were to share their experiences late Monday.
Communications Minister John Mahama earlier said that aid disbursements, while not suspended, began falling behind schedule early this year ahead of the elections, which saw the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) sweep ahead of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).
"Most of the donors have adopted a wait-and-see attitude," Mahama told AFP, adding that the next test is the second-round run-off between the NPP's John Kufuor and John Atta Mills of the NDC for the presidency later this month.
"If we pull through that one successfully," he said, the donors "will start resuming their programs."
Voting took place literally out in the open, with all the apparatus in plain view, three-sided screens to assure secrecy and transparent ballot boxes. The first step after identification was the application of indelible ink on a thumbnail.
The general orderliness of the voting was shattered in just one town, Bawku in the far north of the country, where an election dispute degenerated into ethnic clashes that claimed 10 lives.
The observers from about 20 diplomatic missions, international organizations and western democracy advocacy groups dispersed themselves across the country, focusing on 100 constituencies -- half the total -- where races were expected to be especially close.
Thousands of local monitors also observed the voting.
The observers did not operate under one umbrella and were not expected to issue a joint evaluation, but various missions were expected to make individual -- and positive -- statements.
Fears of violence, intimidation and vote-rigging were heightened ahead of the elections by a heated controversy over voter identification.
Just days before the vote, the Electoral Commission said it would allow voters to use old IDs bearing just thumbprints if they did not have newly issued photo IDs.
The opposition immediately cried foul, and the dispute escalated after the Supreme Court last Monday ruled in favor of the use of thumbprint IDs.
As many as two million names remain on the electoral rolls belonging to voters who have died or who never existed -- collectively referred to as "ghosts" -- and the opposition feared that the loophole would lead to multiple voting.
On the day, however, it turned out to be a red herring, with very few people turning up with thumbprint IDs.
Scattered incidents disrupted the polls, including the intrusion of a gunman who halted voting for about an hour before police took him away, reportedly allowing him to return to the offices of "a political party," as one radio station reported.
One voter was picked up for trying to remove the ink from his thumb before it had time to dry.
And statistics compiled by a local private radio station and displayed on its web site show that an infinitesimal percentage of the ballots were spoiled.
