GHANA'S President John Evans Fifii Atta Mills died yesterday in the course of an illness.A statement said the 68-year-old died a few hours after falling ill, but did not give details. He died exactly two days after his 68th birthday.'It is with a heavy heart...that we announce the sudden and untimely death of the President of the Republic of Ghana,' a statement from the office of his Chief of Staff said.Atta Mills had ruled Ghana since 2009 and had been suffering from throat cancer.Soon after Mills' death, the country's Parliament called an emergency meeting to swear in the Vice President, John Dramani Mahama.It was shortly after an emergency meeting of the security apparatus, and top government functionaries at the Presidential Palace in Osu, that the Chief of Staff to the deceased President released a statement informing the country of his demise.Hours later, a statement from Speaker of the Parliament summoned members of the Parliament for an emergency meeting where Mahama would be sworn in line with Article 60, Clause 6 of the country's constitution.At the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and around the capital, Accra, people gathered in small groups to discuss the sad news.Traders who were selling their wares closed early with some of them describing Mills' death as a shock to the country.Mills was the third President of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. He was inaugurated on January 7, 2009, having defeated the ruling party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election. He was Vice President from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry John Rawlings, and stood unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).Mills was a Fanti from Ekumfi Otuam in the Central Region of Ghana. He was born in Tarkwa, located in the Western Region of Ghana. He was educated at Achimota School, where he completed the Advanced-Level Certificate in 1963, and the University of Ghana, Legon, where he received 'Black man of the month' several times.In 1968, Mills studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London at the age of 27.Mills' first formal teaching assignment was as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana's Legon. He spent close to 25 years teaching at Legon and other institutions of higher learning, and rose in position from lecturer to senior lecturer to associate professor, and served on numerous boards and committees. He also travelled worldwide as a visiting lecturer and professor at educational institutions such as the LSE, and presented research papers at symposiums and conferences. In 1971, he was selected for the Fulbright Scholar programme at Stanford Law School in the United States Of America.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 Jerry John Rawlings chose the NCP leader, Kow Nkensen Arkaah, as his running-mate for Vice-President. Having been elected in the 1992 elections, Arkaah served between 1992'1996.However, on 29 January 1996, the NCP broke with the NDC, merging with the People's Convention Party (PCP) to form a rebirth of the Convention People's Party (the formerly outlawed political party of Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah). Thus, in a bitter split, Arkaah would stand as candidate for the reborn CPP in the 1996 Presidential Elections against Rawlings. Rawlings selected Mills for the vacated Vice-Presidency in his bid for re-election to a second term in Ghana's 1996 Presidential Election. Rawlings was re-elected to his second term in office, and Mills became Vice-President of Ghana between 1996 to 2000.In 2000, Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2000 Presidential elections after Rawlings had served his constitutionally mandated terms as president. 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 was a veteran politician, John Agyekum Kufuor, who was running as the candidate for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Ghana's presidential elections in the year 2000 went into two rounds: In the first round, held on 7 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 28 December 2000, where Kufuor defeated Vice-President Mills with a result of 56.9% of the vote. The NPP won the election, and Kufuor was sworn in as President of Ghana on 7 January 2001.In December 2002, John Atta Mills was elected by his party to be its flag bearer and lead them into the 2004 elections.In 2002, former Vice-President Mills was again selected as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress for the presidential elections in 2004. He was however defeated again by President Kufuor, who won by a margin of 52.45%.On 21 December 2006, former Vice-President Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2008 presidential elections, winning his party's ticket by an 81.4% result. 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 occurred on 7 December 2008. In a very close result amongst all parties, Nana Akufo-Addo's NPP finished with 49.13 per cent of the vote, close to the outright margin required to win in the first round, while Mills' NDC finished with 47.92 per cent. The other parties garnered 2.37 per cent of the votes. The result forced a second-round of voting between NPP and NDC on 28December 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 its voting on 2January 2009. The voting in the Tain constituency led to a landslide victory to the NDC. For several days, the Electoral Commission of Ghana 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 3 January 2009, the election result was finally announced. Former Vice-President John Atta-Mills, who had failed to win in two previous campaigns, made history by winning the 2008 presidential election, becoming the third President of the 4th Republic Of Ghana.
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