Former President of Ghana Jerry John Rawlings is dead.
He is said to
have died Thursday morning at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) in Accra
Graphic Online has gathered.
Mr Rawlings
had been on admission at Korle Bu for about a week for an undisclosed ailment.
Graphic Online
gathers he felt sick after his mother’s burial about three weeks ago.
Born on June
22, 1947, Graphic Online gathers that he passed on Thursday morning.
As a former
Ghanaian military leader and subsequent politician, Mr Rawlings led a military
junta from 1981 until 1992, and then served two terms as the democratically
elected President of Ghana from January 7, 1993 to January 6, 2001.
Mr Rawlings
initially came to power as a flight lieutenant of the Ghana Air Force
following a coup d’état in 1979.
Prior to that,
he led an unsuccessful coup attempt against the ruling military government on
May 15, 1979, just five weeks before scheduled democratic elections were due to
take place.
After
initially handing power over to a civilian government, he took back control of
the country on December 31, 1981 as the Chairman of the Provisional National
Defence Council (PNDC).
In 1992, Mr
Rawlings resigned from the military, founded the National Democratic Congress
(NDC), and became the first President of the 4th Republic.
He was
re-elected in 1996 for four more years.
After two
terms in office, the limit according to the Ghanaian Constitution, Rawlings
endorsed his vice-president John Atta Mills as presidential candidate in 2000.
More to follow…
No comments