About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

John Kufuor

Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOH : John Kufuor

John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor (born December 8, 1938) is the current president of Ghana since January 7 2001. He ran for election in 2000 and won, succeeding Jerry Rawlings, who defeated him when he previously ran for President in the election in 1996, and having the first peaceful transition of power in Ghana since the country's independence was declared.

Both of Kufuor's parents come from families whose members included chiefs, professionals and politicians. Kufuor is married to Theresa Kufuor (née Mensah), with whom he has had five children. Kufuor and his family belong to the Roman Catholic Church. He was educated at Osei Tutu Boarding School (1951-53), Prempeh College (1954-58), Lincoln's Inn, London (1959-1961), and Oxford University (1961-1964). In the Second Republic's Parliamentary Register Kufuor lists as his hobbies and interests table tennis, reading, soccer, and film shows.

Contents

Early Political Life

Kufuor became president with a considerable history of public service, spanning over thirty years. In 1967, he was appointed Chief Legal Officer and Town Clerk(City Manager) of Kumasi, the second largest city of Ghana. He was a member of the 1968-69 and the 1979 Constituent Assemblies that drafted the Constitutions of the Second and Third Republics respectively. In addition he was a Founding Member of the Progress Party (PP) in 1969, the Popular Front Party (PFP) in 1979 and is a Founding Member of the New Patriotic Party(NPP). He has twice been elected as a Member of Parliament, during the Second and Third Republics. He has also been in political detention on two occasions as a result of military coups that overthrew the Second and Third Republics.

He has been a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and in this capacity, he represented Ghana on several occasions. From 1969 to December, 1971, he led Ghana's delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Ministerial Meetings in Addis Ababa, and the Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Lusaka. In 1970, he led the Ghanaian delegation to Moscow in the former Soviet Union, Prague (Former Czechoslovakia), and Belgrade (Yugoslavia) to discuss Ghana's indebtedness to these countries. 

-->
As the Spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Deputy Opposition Leader of the Popular Front Party (PFP) Parliamentary Group during the Third Republic, he was invited to accompany President Limann to the OAU Summit Conference in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He was also a member of the parliamentary delegation that visited the United States of America(USA) in 1981 to talk to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Ghana's economic problems.
President Kufuor with United States President George W. Bush during a visit to the USA in 2001
Enlarge
President Kufuor with United States President George W. Bush during a visit to the USA in 2001

In January, 1982, the leadership of the All People's Party (APP), which was an alliance of all the opposition parties, advised some leading members, including the Deputy Leader of the Alliance, Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, the General Secretary, Dr. Obed Asamoah and Mr. J. A. Kufuor to accept an invitation from the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC)to serve in what was purported to be a National Government. Mr. Kufuor was appointed the Secretary for Local Government in this new government.

As a Secretary for Local Government, he wrote the Local Government Policy Guidelines that were to be the foundation of the current decentralized District Assemblies. He resigned within seven months of acceptance of the position after having satisfied himself that the PNDC Government was not the national Government that it promised to be. He was particularly uncomfortable with the brutality, intolerance and abuse of human rights that characterized the PNDC government.

President Kufuor talking to the press after his decisive victory over John Atta-Mills in the 2004 election
Enlarge
President Kufuor talking to the press after his decisive victory over John Atta-Mills in the 2004 election

Presidency

On April 20th 1996, Mr. J. A. Kufuor was nominated by 1034 out of 2000 delegates of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) drawn from all the 200 Constituencies of the Country to run for the President of Ghana on December 10, 1996. After campaigning for less than nine months, Mr. Kufuor polled almost 40% of the popular votes to Rawling's 57% in the 1996 election, leading some to believe the election was rigged by Jerry Rawlings. On October 23, 1998, he was re-nominated by the New patriotic Party not only to run again for President but also to officially assume the position of Leader of the Party. Kufuor won a decisive election in 2000, defeating John Atta-Mills, Jerry Rawling's Vice President, in the second round of run-off voting with 50.45%

Kufuor was recently re-elected in presidential and parliamentary elections held on December 7 2004,earning 52.45% of the popular vote in the first round,avoiding a run-off while at the same time Kufuor's party, the New Patriotic Party, was able to secure more seats in the Parliament of Ghana.

John Kufuor's Second Cabinet (Jan 2005)

See also

External links

|- style="text-align: center;"

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: