Ghana’s former president Jerry Rawlings is dead

 

Ghana’s former military ruler and president, Jerry John Rawlings, more popularly known as J.J. Rawlings, has died at the age of 73.

Rawlings, according to sources in Ghana, died of coronavirus-related complications Thursday, at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra.

His death comes less than a month after he buried his mother.

Rawlings was a retired military officer and politician who led the country from 1981 to 2001 and also for a brief period in 1979, according to his profile on Wikipedia. He led a military junta until 1992, and then served two terms as the democratically elected president of Ghana.

He 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 15 May 1979, just five weeks before scheduled democratic elections were due to take place.

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After initially handing power over to a civilian government, he took back control of the country on 31 December 1981, as the Chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC). In 1992, he resigned from the military, founded the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and became the first president of the Fourth Republic.

Rawlings was re-elected in 1996 for four more years. After two terms in office, the limit according to the Ghanaian Constitution, he endorsed his vice-president John Atta Mills as presidential candidate in 2000.

He served as the African Union envoy to Somalia.