Ghanaians voted Sunday to choose a successor to John Kufuor as the outgoing president called for calm, while the opposition claimed foul play in a poll being closely watched in Africa and further afield.
Nana Akufo-Addo of Kufuor's ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is squaring off against John Atta-Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the party of ex-president Jerry Rawlings.
The presidential election was forced into a run-off after neither of the leading candidates won more than 50 percent of ballots cast in the first round on December 7. It is only the third election since the country's return to democracy in 1992.
"Among middle class Ghanaians there is a certain disgust about what has happened in Guinea," said Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), referring to the coup this week in another west African nation. "There is therefore some determination ... that we must not disappoint the country, we must not disappoint west Africa and we must not disappoint Africa," he said.
"If this election is credible, if there is a peaceful transition... this will show to the rest of west Africa you can have a peaceful transition without coups," EU chief observer Nickolay Mladenov told AFP.
If election observers were by and large still upbeat by mid-afternoon the opposition NDC complained of voting irregularities in the Ashanti region, traditionally an NPP stronghold. "Our polling agents... have been chased away from various constituencies across Ashanti. There is multiple voting. We can't accept results from the Ashanti region. We can't keep up with the complaints," Alex Segbefia, NDC campaign co-ordinator, told reporters as he flipped through a pile of reports. Electoral commission head Kwado Afari-Gyan refused to be drawn into commenting on the opposition claims, saying he had not yet seen the reports.
"Where I have been (the Volta region), voting has been okay, it has been smooth," he told AFP. The first round vote on December 7 was peaceful but tensions have risen in the past days, with the NPP and NDC trading accusations of plots to rig the run-off election. The NDC said it noted irregularities in early voting on Tuesday, while the NPP said opposition leaflets were trying to enflame tribal and ethnic tension.
Kufuor called for calm: "I am appealing to all Ghanaians... we should all keep cool, go and vote, as a peaceful exercise, as a legitimate exercise." Voters on Sunday expressed a desire for peace.
"Before the election people were talking about possible fighting and war. But we don't want war in Ghana, we don't want what happened in Ivory Coast to happen here," said Lydia Amponseah, a 28-year-old hairdresser with a baby at her breast.
Neighbouring Ivory Coast, once held up as an African success story, has been in the grip of a political crisis since a failed coup in 2002. Atta-Mills himself, as he cast his ballot in Accra, said he hoped voting would be smooth and carried out properly. After the first round the NPP's Akufo-Addo led with 49.13 percent of valid ballots cast while Atta-Mills trailed with 47.92 percent. But the NDC is now the largest party in the 230-seat parliament with 114 seats, against 107 for the NPP. Seven seats went to smaller opposition parties and two are yet to be determined.
Some 12.5 million people were eligible to cast ballots in the polls, which were due to close at 1700 GMT and were being closely watched as a litmus test of whether Ghana has truly consolidated its democracy.
Last week Guinea, Africa's second-oldest independent state, was rocked by a bloodless coup, moments after the death of a its long-time president Lansana Conte. Mauritania's first democratically elected leader was ousted in a coup in August.
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