Honeymoon period will be short as John Mahama tries to fix economy, seen as a huge factor in election

Ghana’s electoral commission had been due to announce the official results of Saturday’s presidential election by Tuesday. But by Sunday morning Mahamudu Bawumia, the country’s vice-president and the flag-bearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), and his campaign team had seen enough to give up.

“The data from our own internal collation of the results indicates that … John Mahama has won the presidential election decisively,” he said at a press conference after calling his rival to concede. By Monday, the commission had confirmed the outcome: the former president Mahama, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had indeed won with 56% of the vote to Bawumia’s 41%.