Profiles of Ghana's presidential election candidates

ACCRA, Ghana (Reuters) -- Ghana is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Thursday.

Voters have to pick a successor to President Jerry Rawlings, who has ruled the West African country for the past 19 years but cannot run under a constitutional two-term limit.

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Most analysts predict that no candidate will win more than 50 percent of the vote and that a second round will thus be needed within two weeks of the first.

Following are snapshots of the seven presidential candidates and other key players.

Mills, 56, is Rawlings's vice president and runs for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

A Christian, he was elected in 1996 as President Rawlings's running mate. A law professor and tax expert, he has written more than a dozen books. He is committed, like his main rival John Kufuor, to donor-supported liberalizing reforms.

Kufuor, 62, is the candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). He comes from the Ashanti region.

A Christian professional lawyer and former foreign minister, he has twice been a member of the Constituent Assembly that wrote the constitutions of 1969 and 1979. He lost to Rawlings in the 1996 presidential election. The party's platform blames the NDC for state corruption and recent economic troubles. Like Atta Mills, Kufuor has picked a Muslim running mate.

Hagan, 62, is standing for the Convention People's Party (CPP). An anti-apartheid Catholic, he is a university professor who has served on a number of academic committees as well as the boards of film and theatre associations.

He was a presidential candidate in 1992 for the now defunct National Independence Party.

Mahama, 55, is the candidate of the People's National Convention (PNC). A doctor, he says a PNC government would establish a "people-centered state" improving education, housing and health facilities. He also vowed to increase the national minimum wage.

Brobby, 47, runs for the United Ghana Movement (UGM). He was the first African to be elected to the leadership of the National Union of Students (NUS) in Britain, Ghana's former colonial power, and was president of Britain's Leeds University Union in 1978-1979.

Wereko-Brobby formed the UGM in 1996 after resigning from the NPP.

Tanoh, 44, is the candidate of the National Reform Party (NRP). A law professor, he is a former executive director of Ghana's National Petroleum Corporation. He served as a member of the Consultative Assembly that drafted the 1992 Constitution.

He was also a member of the Ghanaian delegation to the United Nations from 1986 to 1989.

Lartey, 74, is standing for the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP). Lartey was a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP) in 1979 and ran for president in 1992 under the banner of the National Independence Party (NIP).

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