By Kwasi Kpodo
NSAWKAW, Ghana (Reuters) - Electors in the final constituency to vote in Ghana's presidential run-off delivered a further blow on Friday to the ruling party, which was already trailing narrowly in the election and boycotted the ballot.
Opposition leader John Atta Mills and the ruling party's Nana Akufo-Addo are vying to succeed outgoing President John Kufuor as the West African country prepares to start producing crude oil in 2010. Results are due to be announced on Saturday.
As expected, early results from a handful of polling stations in the rural Tain constituency, which was voting late after problems prevented voting in last Sunday's run-off, showed turnout was low and heavily weighted in Mills's favour.
One of the biggest polling stations, at a health centre in the district capital Nsawkaw, recorded 355 votes for Mills and 68 for Akufo-Addo out of a total registered electorate of 1,160. Full results are expected over the weekend.
Last Sunday's run-off was so close that Tain's 53,000 electors were left to decide the outcome, raising tensions over a vote seen as a chance to bolster Africa's battered democratic credentials after flawed and bloody polls in Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Before Friday's vote, Mills, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), led with 50.13 percent of votes, ahead of Akufo-Addo, of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), on 49.87 percent. Barely 23,000 votes separated the two candidates.
"I want to vote so that we can end this tussle," pensioner Kwadwo Adjei said as he waited to cast his ballot.
Even before the NPP boycott in Tain, Mills was favourite to win Friday's ballot, in a cocoa growing region, and to take the presidency after his NDC overturned the ruling NPP's majority in parliament in a simultaneous legislative election on December 7.
Mills led in Tain then, so Akufo-Addo would require a huge swing in voters' loyalties there to win the national vote.
"All the signs are that Tain will be taken by the NDC," said Rolake Akinola, analyst at consultancy Control Risks in London.
Akufo-Addo has refused to concede defeat and the NPP has appealed results from other regions, citing irregularities.
But Electoral Commission chief Kwadwo Afari-Gyan told Reuters he would announce results on Saturday, leaving little time for any major revision of the results announced on Tuesday.
"I am declaring the results tomorrow at 11 a.m." he said.
The Electoral Commission is considering appeals from both parties, which each accuse the other's supporters of violence and irregularities in Sunday's ballot. International and local monitors said voting was generally free and orderly.
HIGH-STAKES POLL
"It significantly raises the stakes, it significantly raises tensions ... (but) I'm not sure Ghana would necessarily descend into chaos or major instability. There is no historical precedent for that," Control Risks' Akinola said from London.
The NPP, which continues to govern until Kufuor steps down, applied on Thursday for a court order to prevent the Electoral Commission publishing more results, and sought to have the Tain vote delayed. But a lawyer for the party told Joy FM radio on Friday both cases had been withdrawn.
Observers from West African regional bloc ECOWAS said turnout at some Tain polling stations was as low as 20 percent.
Earlier, youths in NPP T-shirts crammed into buses belonging to state-owned Metro Mass Transport and cruised round Nsawkaw chanting "No Vote" at people queuing at polling stations.
Hundreds of soldiers and police have been deployed in Tain to ensure calm, searching vehicles entering Nsawkaw for weapons.
Despite the potential for a protracted legal dispute over the poll, Kufuor said in a statement it was important to stick to the timetable for him to hand over the presidency on January 7.
"I therefore urge all stakeholders to yield to the authority of the electoral commissioner when he declares the result. Any outstanding issue may be settled later by due process," he said.
Under Kufuor's rule Ghana, the world's No. 2 cocoa grower and Africa's second biggest gold miner, has attracted increasing foreign investment thanks in part to its political stability.
