John Evans Fifii Atta Mills was a Ghanaian politician who was President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was | inaugurated on 7 January 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 Rawlings, and stood unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential | elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He died on 24 July 2012 at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra. | He is the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.
Mr. Atta Mills presided over Ghana’s continuing and, for the | region, unusual experiment in stable democracy. He was elected with a margin of | less than 1 percent at the end of 2008.
That the narrowness of | the victory did not set off an explosion of violence, as | had occurred after elections in Ivory | Coast and Kenya, was widely | viewed as evidence of the maturity | of democracy in Ghana, which in 1957 | became the first African nation to | declare independence. Mr. Atta Mills was planning to seek | re-election in December.
“His historical | significance is in the consolidation of democracy | in Ghana,” said Rod Alence, | a Ghana expert at the University of the Witwatersrand | in Johannesburg. “To have someone like Mills, who | was never known as being charismatic, was crucial | | two-party system.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Atta_Mills
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/world/africa/john-atta-mills-ghanas-president-dies-68.html?_r=1  |