Ghana’s former President Jerry John Rawlings has passed on at age 73.
The founder of the National Democratic Congress is said to have died in the early hours of Thursday, November 12, 2020, at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
Cause of his death has not officially been confirmed yet but reports link his death to contracting COVID-19 and suffering from its complications.
This sad news comes after he burried his mother, Madam Agbotui, who died at the age of 101 and was laid to rest a few weeks ago.
About Jerry John Rawlings
Jerry John Rawlings was born on June 22, 1947.
He was a former military leader and subsequent politician who ruled Ghana from 1981 to 2001 and also a brief period in 1979.
He led a military junta until 1992, and then served two terms as the democratically elected President of Ghana.
Rawlings initially came to power in Ghana 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.
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, Rawlings resigned from the military, founded the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and became the first President of the Fourth 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.
