Mills, Prof. John Evans Atta

John Evans Atta-Mills is the current President, and the former Vice-President of Ghana (1997-2001). He is the 3rd President of the 4th Republic of Ghana, taking the oath of office on the 7th of January 2009, in his third attempt to run as candidate for the opposition party between 2001-2008, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

 Also referred to as "The Prof", Mills is married to Ernestina Naadu Mills, and has one son, Sam Kofi Atta-Mills (to Ruby Addo). He is a former national hockey player, a sport which he continues to play, and is also a keen swimmer. He is also a patron of the Accra Hearts Of Oak SC football team.

Born in the Western Region town of Tarkwa on the 21st of July 1944, John Evans Atta-Mills, like many of Ghana's former leaders, was educated at the Achimota School in Accra from 1957 to 1963.

Upon completing his secondary education, Mills studied law at the University Of Ghana, completing a Batchelor Of Law degree from 1963 to 1966, and a Professional Certificate Of Law the following year.

So began the pattern of the next twenty years of Mills' life, which was largely spent with spells both in Ghana & internationally as an academic. In 1968, he studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received a PhD at the School of Oriental African Studies at the University of London.

In 1971, he was selected for the Fulbright Scholar Program at Stanford Law School in the United States Of America. At age 27, he was awarded his PhD after successfully defending his doctoral thesis in the area of taxation and economic development.

He returned to Ghana that year, becoming a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana. He became a visiting professor of Temple Law School (Philadelphia, USA), with two stints from 1978 to 1979, and 1986 to 1987, and was a visiting professor at Leiden University (Holland) from 1985 to 1986. By 1992, he had become an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ghana.

During this period, he authored several publications relating to taxation during the 1970s & 1980s.

Outside of his academic pursuits, Professor Mills was the Acting Commissioner of Ghana's Internal Revenue Service from 1986 to 1993, and the substantive Commissioner from 1993 to 1996.

For the inaugural Presidential Elections in 1992, the National Convention Party (NCP) had formed an alliance with the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Former Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) Chairman, and leader of Ghana, Flight-Lieutenant John Jeremiah Rawlings chose the NCP leader, Kow Nkensen Arkaah, as his running-mate for Vice-President.

Having been elected in the 1992 elections, Vice-President Arkaah served between 1992-1996. However, on the 29th of January 1996, the NCP broke with the NDC, merging with the People's Conventional Party (PCP) to form a rebirth of the Conventional People's Party (the formerly outlawed political party of Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah).

Thus, in a bitter split, Vice-President Arkaah would stand as candidate for the reborn CPP in the 1996 Presidential Elections against President Rawlings.

 President Rawlings selected Mills for the vacated Vice-Presidency in his bid for re-election to a second term in Ghana's 1996 Presidential Election. President Rawlings was re-elected to his second term in office, and Mills became Vice President of Ghana between 1996 to 2000.

After two successive terms, Ghana's constitution prevented President Rawlings from running for a third term. Vice-President Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2000 Presidential Elections. At the time, and after essentially two decades of PNDC/NDC rule, the NDC's war chest for the upcoming elections was certainly much stronger than that of the NPP. The result would clearly between the NDC's popularity with the people, and Vice-President Mills' track-record alongside President Rawlings, and the veteran political experience that the NPP candidate would bring to the campaign.

The main rival for Vice-President Mills' own bid for the Presidency would be against a veteran politician, John Agyekum Kufuor, who was running as the candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Kufuor was a former Member Of Parliament during the rule of Prime Minister Kofi A. Busia's Progress Party during his period of rule from 1969 to 1971, and served as the Deputy Minister Of Foreign Affairs. He had also been the Deputy Opposition Leader of the Popular Front Party (PFP) during the administration of Hilla Limann in the early 1980s. He had lost out to President Rawlings in the 1996 Presidential Elections, but gained a respectable 39.62% of the popular vote.

 Ghana's 2000 Presidential Elections went into two rounds. While in the first round, held on the 7th of December 2000, Mills gained 44.8% of the vote, Kufuor won the first round with 48.4%. This result forced the elections into a two-party run-off vote on the 28th of December 2000, where Kufuor crushed Vice-President Mills with a result of 56.9% of the vote. The NPP had won the election, and Kufuor was sworn in as President Of Ghana on the 7th of January 2001.

 In 2002, former Vice-President Mills was again selected as the candidate for the upcoming Presidential Elections in 2004. With President Kufuor's professional statesmanship evident, and Ghana beginning to show strong economical growth & attracting foreign investment, before votes were even cast, the result was largely being seen as a forgone conclusion. Subsequently, President Kufuor comfortably won the 2004 Presidential Elections by a margin of 52.45%, winning re-election in the first round of voting, and gaining even more parliamentary seats.

It was almost without surprise that on the 21st of December 2006, that former Vice-President Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2008 Presidential Elections, winning his party's ticket by a staggering 81.4% result. However, while NDC seemed to only have one serious candidate, the ruling NPP had two main contenders, Nana Akufo-Addo & John Alan Kyeremanten.

Nana Akufo-Addo was the son of former President Edward Akufo-Addo (1969-1971), and former member of 'The Big Six', who were the pioneers of independence from Britain. Nana Akufo-Addo was an Oxford-educated barrister, and had served in the Kufuor administration as Attorney-General & Minister Of Justice from 2001 to 2003, and Foreign Minister thereafter.

John Alan Kyeremanten, more commonly referred to as Alan Cash, is a lawyer & businessman, as well as a former Ghana Ambassador to the United States Of America, and held several posts under the Kufuor administration, notably as the Minister Of Trade & Industry.

Eventually, the NPP candidate became Nana Akufo-Addo, who won the most votes, but failed to get an outright result as preferred candidate. Nonetheless, as runner-up, Kyeremanten conceded defeat, and threw his support behind Nana Akufo-Addo as the NPP flagbearer.

The campaign for the 2008 Presidential Elections was hard-fought. While the NPP pointed to their history of economic management, NDC pointed to issues such as corruption, and misappropriation of government funds. In the end, Ghanaians would be compelled to vote on how they compared the performance on the NDC's performance in government between 1992-2000, with NPP's performance in government between 2001-2009. Although the elections would be viewed as largely peaceful, clashes did occur between NDC & NPP supporters, who were both as passionate as ever.

Early polls showed that Mills was the favourite, but in another poll taken just months before the first-round voting, Nana Akufo-Addo emerged as the favourite. Election campaigning was strong, particularly with advertising, which was clearly much heavier with the NPP candidate.

The first round of voting occured on the 7th of December 2008. In a very close result amongst all parties, Nana Akufo-Addo's NPP finished with 49.13% of the vote, painfully close to the outright margin required to win in the first round, while Mills' NDC finished with 47.92%. The other parties garnered only 2.37% of the votes.

The result forced a second-round of voting between NPP & NDC on the 28th of December 2008. The result was a slim margin held by Mills, but due to problems with the distribution of ballots, the Tain constituency, located in the Brong-Ahafo Region, was forced to re-run it's voting on the 2nd of January 2009.

The voting in the Tain constituency led to a landslide victory to the NDC. For several days, the Electoral Commission did not call the result to the NDC, and the NPP filed a lawsuit, claiming that "the atmosphere in the rural district was not conducive to a free and fair election".

Eventually, the NPP bowed to the inevitable, and on the morning of the 3rd of January 2009, the election result was finally called. Former Vice-President John Atta-Mills, who had failed to win in two previous campaigns, had won the 2008 Presidential Election, becoming the 3rd President of the 4th Republic Of Ghana.

On the 7th of January 2009, President John Atta-Mills took the oath of office at Independence Square in Accra, in a typically colourful spectacle, which was broadcast on live television. President Mills then when on to the Parliament Of Ghana, where his ministers were announced.

Finally, President Mills headed to Golden Jubilee House, the recently-completed seat of government which succeeded Christiansborg Castle in Osu, and in some irony, had been the source of bitter disagreement between the two parties over the Kufuor administration's decision to loan $50 million from India to build.

In the final analysis, the Kufuor administration had been punished by the voters for it's handling of issues such as the decision to construct Golden Jubilee House, failing to prioritize it's spending, and failing to tackle corruption. Indeed, within a very short space of time, media releases announced that the government's coffers were empty. Subsequent articles that criticized the Kufuor adminstration's spending, particularly in it's last years in office, included a publicized article that showed that $1 million spent on a book release to commemorate Ghana@50 celebrations was a failure, with most of the books in storage, and very few sold in return.

However, the Mills administration has not entered office without difficulties, particularly in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. This event has seen the value of the Ghana Cedi drop considerably, and economic issues such as inflation & foreign debt, which were greatly reduced during the Kufuor administration, is now increasing. Other key election promises such as fighting corruption & crime have yet to be met.

Indeed, while the visit of US President Barack Obama, and First Lady Michelle Obama on the 11th of July 2009 was the vindication of a largely untroubled election result, many Ghanaians are trouble by the apparent lack of direction from the Mills administration in terms of policy & nation-building since entering office.