VOA标准英语2009年-Ghana's Ruling-Party Boycotting Friday Vote

（单词翻译）

Ghana's opposition party candidate John Atta Mills (l) and Ruling party presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in Accra, 09 Dec 2008

Ghana's ruling National Patriotic² Party says it will not take part in Friday's vote in the Tain constituency because its supporters there are being intimidated³.

The party is seeking a court order to have the vote postponed⁴. Party spokesman Arthur Kennedy says the security situation in the western district is not conducive⁵ to a free and fair election. If officials go ahead with the poll, he says the ruling party will boycott⁶ the vote.

A shortage of ballot⁷ papers during last Sunday's run-off forced the scheduled revoting in Tain because Ghana's Electoral Commission said it could not name a winner without those results.

With nearly nine million ballots⁸ cast, just over 23,000 votes separate opposition candidate John Atta-Mills and ruling-party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. So the 53,000 registered voters in Tain could well decide Ghana's next president.

With all but the Tain votes counted, opposition candidate Atta-Mills has 50.13 percent of the vote. The ruling party's Akufo-Addo has 49.87 percent. During the first round of presidential balloting⁹ December 7, Atta-Mills narrowly won the Tain constituency, edging out Akufo-Addo by fewer than 1,300 votes.

Overall, Akufo-Addo won that first round. But because no candidate received more than 50 percent of the votes cast, he and Atta-Mills went head-to-head in a second round that was to decide the winner.

Now the contest hangs on the results of revoting in Tain and the Electoral Commission's investigation¹⁰ of allegations of vote fraud by both the ruling party and the opposition National Democratic Congress. The electoral commission says its examination of alleged¹¹ fraud in the Ashanti and Volta districts will be factored into the final outcome.

The commission has given no indication about when those investigations¹² might be completed or when a winner might be announced.

The ruling party's Akufo-Addo is a 64-year-old former attorney general and foreign minister who campaigned on the strength of improvements in Ghana's economy, health care and infrastructure¹³ during the administration of President John Kufuor.

Opposition candidate Atta-Mills is a 64-year-old tax law professor who campaigned against the ruling party saying it is time for a change after what he calls eight years of miserable¹⁴ failure.

Whoever wins will govern with a decidedly different parliament, as the ruling party lost its legislative¹⁵ majority in the first round, dropping 21 seats to finish with 107 of the 228 seats in parliament. The opposition picked up 20 seats to finish with 114 seats.