Preliminary results show Kufuor leading

ACCRA, Dec. 8 -- Preliminary results on Wednesday of Ghana's elections showed that President John Kufuor of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) was leading against his main challenger John Atta Mills.

According to available intermediate results from 103 of the 230 constituencies across the county, Kufuor garnered 57.8 percent of the votes, while Mills secured 40 percent.

The other two candidates, George Opesika Aggudey from the Convention People's Party (CPP) and Edward Mahama from the Grand Coalition consisting of three parties, obtained 1 percent and 1.3 percent of the votes, respectively.

According to electoral laws, a presidential candidate with over 50 percent of the votes during the first round of voting will be declared the winner. Otherwise, the two leading candidates will face a runoff election 21 days later.

Aggudey conceded defeat Tuesday night after realizing the impossibility to win.

Kufuor came to the presidency in 2000 by defeating Mills in a second-round election.

A total of 10.3 million Ghanaians registered to vote Tuesday in the west African country's fourth successive democratic elections since the end of military rule in 1992, and the turnout proved to be large, according to electoral officials.

Since independence from British colonizers in 1957, Ghana had gone through a series of coups. A new constitution, restoring multiparty politics, was approved in 1992. And general elections were successfully held in that year and then in 1996 and 2000. Political and economic stability has been restored.

Although the country is well endowed with natural resources with gold, timber and cocoa as major foreign exchange earners, poverty remains a big challenge, with gross domestic product per capita only standing at 341 US dollars in 2003 and 40 percent of Ghanaians living below the UN poverty line, 1 dollar per day per person. Enditem