John Atta Mills
John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills was a Ghanaian politician and legal scholar who served as the 11th president of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election. He was previously the third vice president from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and he contested unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress. He was the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.
Early life
Mills was born on 21 July 1944 in Tarkwa, in the Western Region of Ghana. His parents were John Atta Mills Sr., an educationist, who taught at the Komenda Teacher Training College and Mercy Dawson Amoah. He was the second child among seven siblings. A member of the Fante ethnic group, he hailed from the town of Ekumfi Otuam in the Mfantsiman East constituency of the Central Region of Ghana. He had his primary and middle school education at Huni Valley Methodist Primary School and Komenda Methodist Middle School respectively. He then proceeded to the prestigious Achimota School for his secondary education, where he completed the Ordinary and Advanced-Level Certificates in 1961 and 1963 respectively, and the University of Ghana, Legon, where he completed a bachelor of law degree, LLB and a professional law certificate in 1967.Mills studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he obtained an LLM in 1968 and earned a PhD in Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies School of Law, part of the federal University of London, after completing his doctoral thesis in the field of taxation and economic development in 1971 at the age of 27.
Early career
Mills' first formal teaching assignment was as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana. He spent close to twenty-five years teaching at Legon and other institutions of higher learning. In 1971, he was selected for the Fulbright Scholar programme at Stanford Law School in the US.He returned to his homeland, Ghana, at the end of the international educational exchange fellowship to work at his alma mater, the University of Ghana, for 25 years. He became a visiting professor at Temple University, with two stints from 1978 to 1979, and 1986 to 1987. He was also a visiting lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1985 to 1986. During this period, he authored several publications relating to taxation in the 1970s and 1980s.
Outside of his academic pursuits, Mills was the Acting Commissioner of Ghana's Internal Revenue Service from 1988 to 1993 under President Jerry John Rawlings, and the substantive Commissioner from 1993 to 1996. By 1992, he had become an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ghana. In 2002, he was a visiting scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia through a joint Canadian International Development Agency – International Development Research Centre fellowship programme.
Politics
Vice President of Ghana
For the inaugural presidential election in 1992, the National Convention Party had formed an alliance with the National Democratic Congress. Former Provisional National Defence Council 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 election, Arkaah served between 1992 and 1996.However, on 29 January 1996, the NCP broke with the NDC. Arkaah with the National Convention Party formed the Great Alliance with the New Patriotic Party and was subsequently nominated as the running mate of John Agyekum Kufuor to challenge the National Democratic Congress. Rawlings selected Mills for the vacated Vice-Presidency in his bid for re-election to a second term in the election and was re-elected to his second term in office, serving from 1996 to 2000. In his capacity as vice-president, he served as the Chairman of the Police Council of Ghana and the Chairman of the Economic Management Team.
Presidential elections
In 2000, Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2000 presidential election after Rawlings had served his constitutionally mandated terms as president. The main rival for Mills' own bid for the presidency was John Agyekum Kufuor, who was running as the candidate for the opposition New Patriotic Party. In the heat of the 2000 presidential campaign, Mills was roundly criticized for statements that if elected he would consult with Rawlings daily. In the first round, held on 7 December 2000, Mills gained 44.8% of the vote, Kufuor won the first round with 48.4%, thus forcing a second round. On 28 December 2000, Kufuor defeated Mills with 56.9% of the vote and was sworn in as president on 7 January 2001.In December 2002, Mills was elected by his party to be its flag bearer and lead them into the 2004 election. He was, however, defeated again by incumbent president John Agyekum Kufuor, who received 52.45% of the vote on the first ballot.
On 21 December 2006, he became the NDC's candidate for the 2008 presidential election, winning his party's ticket by an 81.4% result, far ahead of his opponents, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, and Eddie Annan. In the 2008 election, John Agyekum Kufuor was no longer eligible to run as president, having served two terms. It was during this time that the term Better Ghana Agenda was coined. During the 2008 elections, in an attempt to change the public perception at the time that he would be a political lackey of his former mentor, Jerry Rawlings when elected, he distanced himself from his previous comments made in the 2000 campaign.
Mills' main opponent from the New Patriotic Party was now Nana Akufo-Addo. Mills ran under the campaign slogan of "A Better Man for a Better Ghana," on a platform of change. He said: "People are complaining. They're saying that their standard of living has deteriorated these past eight years. So if Ghana is a model of growth, it's not translating into something people can feel." The result of the first ballot had Akufo-Addo in front with 49.13% of the vote to Mills' 47.92%, however, a run-off second round of voting was needed. The second round of voting took place on 28 December 2008. The result was a slim lead held by Mills, but due to problems with the distribution of ballots, the Tain constituency, located in the Brong-Ahafo Region, was forced to vote again on 2 January 2009. The final result was a victory by Mills with 50.23% of the vote to Akufo-Addo's 49.77%. Mills became the third president of the 4th Republic of Ghana. Self-described as a social democrat who believed in the concept of social welfare espoused by Kwame Nkrumah, Mills embraced a political platform that was more comprehensive and less divisive than that of either Nkrumah or Rawlings. John Atta Mills was sworn in as president on 7 January 2009 in a peaceful transition after Akufo-Addo was narrowly defeated. His persistence and determination paid off when he won the 2008 presidential poll.
Presidency
Amongst his accomplishments as president was presiding over and initiating Ghana's first ever foray into oil production, after oil was discovered in commercial quantities under his predecessor, John Kufuor. He was also credited for growth in other sectors of the economy during his tenure. He was the first incumbent president to be re-nominated for an election for his party via a primary. Some of the monumental achievements chalked during his term of office include:Economy
Under Mills, Ghana's stable economy experienced sustained reduced inflation leading to the attainment of single digit inflation of about 8.4% from a high of 18.1% in December 2008. This is indicative of prudent fiscal, monetary and other austerity policy measures that characterised his presidency to put the economy in healthy shape. The Ghanaian currency, the Cedi also stabilised as a result of these policies. In 2011, Ghana was the fastest growing economy in the world at 20.15% for the first half of the year and 14.4% at the end of the financial year according to the International Monetary Fund and EconomyWatch.com. Moreover, Ghana's budget deficit was reduced to 2% of the Gross Domestic Product during his tenure compared to 14.5% of GDP in 2008, just before he was elected as the President of Ghana. There was also a huge improvement in Ghana's gross international reserves and foreign direct investments highlighting exceptional macroeconomic performance. The Mills government also implemented the Single Spine Salary system which increased compensation levels of all public sector workers. In a bid to improve the efficiency in revenue collection, Mills established the Ghana Revenue Authority which integrated Value Added Tax, Customs Excise and Preventive Service and Internal Revenue Service. Under his governance, Ghana met three out of the four primary convergence criteria for the proposed common currency, Eco of the West African Monetary Zone. These accomplishments led to renewed domestic and foreign investor confidence in Ghana's economy. During Mills' time in office, Ghana was adjudged the best place for doing business in West Africa and best West African performer in access to credit according to the 2011 World Bank Doing Business global rankings.In 2008, Mills made refurbishing the Kotokoraba Market in Cape Coast a major feature of his presidential campaign. As President, he sought financing for the refurbishment from China.