From pariah to a VIP guest of Scotland

LIKE many world leaders, Jerry Rawlings has a chequered background. When the Ghanaian president, who visits Scotland tomorrow, seized power for the second time in 1981, he promised to lay the foundations of a socialist state, travelling to Havana, Libya and other countries to learn the tricks of the "rogue state" trade.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank were out, Marx, Lenin, Fidel and Col Gaddafi were in. That was the way the world was moving, in Mr Rawling's view, nine years before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

A Ghanaian air force flight lieutenant, Mr Rawlings joined the West's list of pariah leaders as Ghanaians began to suffer a wave of human rights abuses - the regime's knee-jerk reaction to an outbreak of protests over the faltering Ghanaian economy.

Like a chameleon, however, Mr Rawlings - the son of a Scottish chemist and a woman of the Ewe people, one of Ghana's largest ethnic groups - has learned to change his colours and his remarkable transition from Marxism to capitalism has transformed his country's fortunes and won him the West's respect - grudging though it may be in some quarters.

Tourism has become the country's third largest foreign exchange earner, after gold, cocoa, and timber, as the country's GNP has grown at a rate of over 4.5 per cent for the past two. This year it is forecast to grow by 5.4 per cent this year.

This is an African success story which has not been lost on the United States, is now Ghana's biggest trade partner, or Britain, the leading investor in Ghana (around ?500m). France and Germany have also increased business with Ghana.

Still, does the transition from Marxism to capitalism erase a human rights record?

The Scottish establishment, so adamant that Chile's General Augusto Pinochet should not have been sent home but extradited instead to Spain to face trial for human rights abuses committed a quarter of a century ago, now sees fit to welcome the Ghanaian leader - whose record is not dissimilar to the former Chilean dictator's.

True, human rights abuses may not be committed in Ghana on quite the same scale today as they were in the 1980s, but, according to a US State Department report, "numerous incidents from earlier years remain unsolved. There were continued credible reports that members of the police beat prisoners and other citizens, and arbitrarily arrested and detained persons."

Trade comes first, evidently, at least in Washington.

The Foreign Office on the other hand, begs to differ, saying in its report on Ghana: "In the early to mid-1980s, human rights abuses occurred. Since then there has been steady improvement, a trend consolidated by the return to constitutional rule. Ghana now has a generally good human rights record. There is an independent judiciary and the press is lively and free."

In fact, Britain has been steadily boosting its ties with Ghana ever since Mr Rawlings emerged from the Marxist wilderness.

So, good guy or a bad guy?

Born in Accra on 22 June 1947, Mr Rawlings attended Achimota secondary school and Ghana Military Academy in Teshie. In 1969, he became an air force pilot and in 1978 was promoted to flight lieutenant.

He had become politically active in the late 1970s, blaming food shortages, inflation, and economic stagnation on the corruption and mismanagement of the military regime of the time.

When a ban on political parties was lifted in 1979, Mr Rawlings won wide popularity as he began to speak out against the government, demanding that it help the poor.

Mr Rawlings, on the back of the wave of popular support, launched a coup in May, 1979 - it failed and he and other officers were arrested and jailed. Freed from prison the following month after a second, successful coup, he became leader of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which ran the country after the coup.

The AFRC had vowed to punish members of the former regime for corruption and eight former officials and military leader were promptly executed, including Akwasi Afrifa and Generals I K Acheampong and F W K Akuffo.

But the AFRC abided by a previously scheduled election date and Mr Rawlings handed over power to Hilla Limann of the People's National Party in September, 1979.

Mr Limann retired Ft Lt Rawlings from the air force. Though that event may not have been connected with what happened next, he was soon to regret it.

Mr Limann found himself unable to jumpstart Ghana's failed deteriorating economy. With the country crippled by a huge foreign debt and an annual inflation rate of over 140 per cent, public discontent began to spill over into unrest.

In December 1981, Mr Rawlings staged his "second coming": another coup saw him become head of state, as chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC). The PNDC introduced raw Marxism, setting up worker councils to monitor factory output and "workers' defence committees" in each neighbourhood. He turned for support to the former Soviet Union, but by 1983, it had become clear that Ghana wasn't working the way he had intended.

Seeing - perhaps ahead of his time - that the writing was on the wall for Marxism, Mr Rawlings turned to free-market reforms, devaluing Ghana's currency, freezing the hiring of state workers and privatising state enterprises, including a number of lucrative coffee and cocoa plantations. Western governments and his old enemy, the IMF, heaped praise on Mr Rawlings, but as the harsh austerity began to bite it fostered unrest at home.

He faced moves to depose him, putting down coups attempts each year between 1983 and 1987. His government jailed opposition leaders and at least one person convicted of plotting a coup is known to have been executed, bringing condemnation from Amnesty International and other human rights organisations.

Mr Rawlings weathered the storm and by the early 1990s, his reforms had led the country to a strong economic recovery.

In 1992, in the first presidential elections in 13 years, deemed clean and fair by the Commonwealth and Organisation of African Unity, Mr Rawlings won a landslide victory, with 58 per cent of the vote.

He won re-election to another four-year term in 1996 in a similar landslide. Again, foreign observers judged the elections free and fair.

Further consolidating Mr Rawling's new "good guy" international image, Ghana has become the fifth biggest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations (the UK currently ranks about tenth).

Ghana has deployed troops to the ECOWAS peacekeeping forces in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as troops, military observers and civilian police officers to peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, Western Sahara, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Croatia and Tajikistan.

The country's armed forces command and staff college, staffed by four British Officers and funded by the Foreign Office, is regarded as a United Nations centre of excellence for international peacekeeping training.

The college's dining rooms, new accommodation blocks and a new peacekeeping library, were opened in November last year by the Duke of Edinburgh.

Ghanaian ministers are frequent visitors to Britain. Mr Rawlings was last in Scotland when he attended the Commonwealth the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting held in Edinburgh in 1997.

Ghana's new image, for which the former "hard man" Mr Rawlings contributed so much, is expected to be further consolidated by elections this December.

Mr Rawlings, having served two terms, will not stand - and he has said he will retire from politics. John Agyekum Kufuor, of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is expected to succeed him as president.

But the jury is still out on Mr Rawlings' democratic credentials. Says Patrick Smith of Africa Confidential: "There are many Ghanaian families who suffered abuses during Mr Rawlings's government that will attempt to bring him to trial once he has left office."

The Pinochet outcome, it seems, may still be possible for the former Ghanaian dictator.