Jerry Rawlings

Jerry Rawlings

Jerry John Rawlings (born Jeremiah John Rawlings on 22 June 1947) is a former leader of the Republic of Ghana and the current African Union envoy to Somalia. Rawlings ruled Ghana as a military Leader in 1979 and from 1981 to 1992, and then as the first elected president of the Fourth Republic from 1993 to 2001. He initially took power in a coup d'état, but in the 1990s following sustained political and economic pressure from international institutions and governments began a process of economic and then political liberalization. He founded the National Democratic Congress, which won the 1992 general election. He took office in 1993, and was re-elected in 1997.

Rawlings appeared on the Ghanaian political scene on 15 May 1979, leading a group of junior officers in the Ghana Air Force in a coup attempt on the regime of Fred Akuffo which resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. He was court-martialled in public and sentenced to death. On June 4 military officials overthrew the Akuffo government and released the Rawlings group from prison just weeks before general elections were scheduled.

Rawlings and company formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and conducted what it termed "a housecleaning exercise", where large sums of stolen government money were retrieved into government coffers and inflation was stabilized. Daily radio announcements named suspected fraudsters and demanded their appearance before the AFRC. An election held that year was won by Dr. Hilla Limann of the People's National Party (PNP). However, on 31 December 1981 Rawlings and the AFRC overthrew Dr. Limann's government, citing economic mismanagement. Rawlings then installed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government with himself as chairman.

Rawlings retired from the Armed Forces and set up the National Democratic Congress. This party, with Rawlings as its candidate, won 58.3 percent of the votes (the largest percentage won by a presidential candidate in Ghana's political history) in the 1992 elections. The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) claimed that the election was stolen, although international observers judged the elections "largely free and fair." In 1996, Rawlings won the general elections by 57 percent and elections were judged largely free and fair by international observers.

After two terms in office, barred by the constitution from standing in any election, Rawlings endorsed his vice-president John Evans Atta Mills as presidential candidate in 2000. The NDC with Mills as candidate, however, lost the elections to the NPP candidate John Agyekum Kufuor. Once again, elections were judged to be free and fair.

Rawlings is married to Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings and has four children: three girls and a boy. He is the joint recipient of the 1993 World Hunger Award, which he used as seed capital in establishing the University for Development Studies (UDS) in the north of Ghana.